Quote collection
223 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him."
"Whatever increases, decreases, limits or extends the body's power of action, increases decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action. And whatever increases, decreases, limits, or extends the mind's power of action, also increases, decreases, limits, or extends the body's power of action."
"The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas."
"Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause."
"Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words."
"The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God."
"I do not believe anyone has reached such perfection, surpassing all others, except Christ, to whom God immediately revealed - without words or visions - the conditions which lead to salvation."
"The multitude always strains after rarities and exceptions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine."
"If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival."
"I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge."
"Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious."
"God is a thing that thinks."
"He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine."
"Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action."
"The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures."
"Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things."
"Everyone has as much right as he has might."
"Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow."
"If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return."
"Things which are accidentally the causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil omens."