Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear.
Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.
What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.
The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God.
If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.
Love is nothing but joy accompanied with the idea of an eternal cause.
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.
Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.
I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature
Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.
Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.
Men are especially intolerant of serving and being ruled by, their equals.
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
Yet nature cannot be contravened, but preserves a fixed and immutable order.
Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.
Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.
A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil.
If facts conflict with a theory, either the theory must be changed or the facts.
According as each has been educated, so he repents of or glories in his actions.
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.
True piety for the universe but no time for religions made for man's convenience.
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.
Measure, time and number are nothing but modes of thought or rather of imagination.
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures.
He who regulates everything by laws, is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.
The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.
Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.
Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.
I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.
Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens.
The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.
Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.
Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.
The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.
Men who are ruled by reason desire nothing for themselves which they would not wish for all mankind.
I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.
He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
The virtue of a free man appears equally great in refusing to face difficulties as in overcoming them.
Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.