Jay > Jay's Quotes

“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.”
― Spinoza

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”
― Spinoza

“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“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.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
― Benedictus de Spinoza

“Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.”
― Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

“There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza: The Letters

“None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.”
― Benedict Spinoza

“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“If God were a theory, the study of theology would be the way to understand Him. But God is alive and in need of love and worship. This is why thinking of God is related to our worship. In an analogy of artistic understanding, we sing to Him before we are able to understand Him. We have to love in order to know. Unless we learn how to sing, unless we know how to love, we will never learn to understand Him".”
― Abraham Heschel