The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.
No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.
If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.
Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.
I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.
Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.
Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.
When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.
What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter
None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.
Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.
Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.
The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world.
Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.
We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.
Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.
I call him free who is led solely by reason.
Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
We feel and know that we are eternal.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare
Will and intellect are one and the same thing.
Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.
The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.
Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
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Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (Ethics, part III, proposition 13, scholium).
Reason is no match for passion.
Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from citizens.
It is certain that seditions, wars, and contempt or breach of the laws are not so much to be imputed to the wickedness of the subjects, as to the bad state of the dominion.
By that which is self-caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent.
Whether this desire for sex is moderate or not, it is usually called lust.
I saw that all the things I feared and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them.
These are the prejudices which I undertook to notice here. If any others of a similar character remain, they can easily be rectified with a little thought by anyone.
Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
