Quote #68

All our endeavours or desires so follow from the necessity of our nature, that they can be understood either through it alone, as their proximate cause, or by virtue of our being a part of nature, which cannot be adequately conceived through itself without other individuals.

More from Baruch Spinoza

  1. In refusing benefits caution must be used lest we seem to despise or to refuse them for fear of having to repay them in kind.
  2. In so far as men are influenced by envy or any kind of hatred, one towards another, they are at variance, and are therefore to be feared in…
  3. A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.
  4. It is before all things useful to men to associate their ways of life, to bind themselves together with such bonds as they think most fitte…
  5. He whose honour is rooted in popular approval must, day by day, anxiously strive, act, and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For th…
  6. To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the power and the advantage of any private person. For the riches of any private person are who…
  7. Hatred can never be good. ... Here, and in what follows, I mean by hatred only hatred towards men.
  8. Flattery begets harmony; but only by means of the vile offence of slavishness or treachery. None are more readily taken with flattery than …

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