Phoebe Aster Skylake

“Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.”
― Benedict de Spinoza

“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”
― Baruch De Spinoza, Ethics

“An imaginary divinity has been given to man so that he may strip himself of it.”
― Simone Weil

“You could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything.”
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace