Quotes from Ethics

Quotations follow the Edwin Curley translation (Penguin Classics, 1996) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

2. 3

   I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

3. 4

   Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.

4. 5

   Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

5. 6

   A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.

6. 7

   Men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire.

7. 8

   For the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists.

8. 9

   To man there is nothing more useful than man.

9. 10

   The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question.

10. 11

    The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

11. 12

    But, notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.

12. 13

    It is the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity.

13. 14

    An emotion can only be controlled or destroyed by another emotion contrary thereto, and with more power for controlling emotion.

14. 15

    I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.