Baruch Spinoza Quotes

The use of knowledge in our sex (beside the amusement of solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life and, it may be, preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves and will not suffer us to share.

I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you-trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for it is a sign of a tractable and commendable nature; and in all cases of passion admit reason to govern.

Feminism seeks to turn the biggest, bloodiest carnivore in the world - passion - into a right-on cud-chewing vegan. It can never work. Sex was never meant to be that way. Sex, on the whole, was meant to be short, nasty and brutish. If what you want is cuddling, you should buy a puppy.

This, indeed, is one of the eternal paradoxes of both life and literature-that without passion little gets done; yet, without control of that passion, its effects are largely ill or null.

Women were formed to temper Mankind, and sooth them into Tenderness and Compassion; not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blowup in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.

Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them.

Great battles are really won before they are actually fought. To control our passions we must govern our habits, and keep watch over ourselves in the small details of everyday life.

When the heat and motion of blind impulses and passions distract it on all sides, we can neither give nor receive anything truly. But when we find our centre in our soul by the power of self-restraint, by the force that harmonizes all warring element

One means very effectual for the preservation of health is a quiet and cheerful mind, not afflicted with violent passions or distracted with immoderate cares.

He that would relish success to a purpose should keep his passions cool, and his expectations low; and then it is possible that his fortune might exceed his fancy; for an advantage always rises by surprise; and is almost always doubled by being unlooked for.

The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.

And you? Now that I have discovered you? Beautiful, dangerous, unleashed. Still I try to hold you, knowing that your body is faced with knives.

Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion

A man who wants to control his animal passions easily does so if he controls his palate.

Spiritual health is no more stable than bodily; and though we may seem unaffected by the passions we are just as liable to be carried away by them as to fall ill when in good health.

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

The health of the soul is as precarious as that of the body; for when we seem secure from passions, we are no less in danger of their infection than we are of falling ill when we appear to be well.

But the law is an odd thing. For instance, one country in Europe has a law that requires all its bakers to sell bread at the exact same price. A certain island has a law that forbids anyone from removing its fruit. And a town not too far from where you live has a law that bars me from coming within five miles of its borders.

The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

I must say...that more unmanly, brutal treatment of a little pony it was never my painful lot to witness; and by giving way to such passion, you injure your own character as much, nay more, than you injure your horse, and remember, we shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast.

Keep your passions in check, but beware of giving your reason free rein.

The foes from whom we pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites, and follies; and against these there is always need that we should war.