The Wisdome of Spinoza

• Perfect truth is possible only with knowldege, and in knowldege the whole essence of the thing operates on the soul and is joined essentially to it.

• Conceit makes men a nuisance to one aother;the conceited man relates only his own great deeds, and only the evil ones of others.

• Conceited man delights in the presence of his inferiors, who will gape at his perfections and exploits; and becomes at last the victim of those who praise him.

• A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.

• Books which teach and speak of whatever is highest and best are equally sacred, whatever be the tongue in which they are written, or the nation to which they belong.

• Surely human affairs woould be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than suffficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

• Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

• So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long is he dertermined not to do it : And consequently, so long it is impossible to him that he should do it.

• Sadness diminishes or hinders a man's power of action.

• Avarice, ambition, and lust are nothing but species of madness, althoug not enumerated among diseases.

• When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his master.

• Pride is a kind of pleasure produced by a man thinking too well of himself.

• to be what we are , and to becme what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.