Ethics Quotes

From what has been said we may clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavours to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavours to remove and destroy the object of his hatred.

Will and intellect stand in the same relation to the nature of God as do motion, and rest, and absolutely all natural phenomena, which must be conditioned by God to exist and act in a particular manner.

Whenever a man thinks something is beyond his capability, he necessarily thinks so, and by this belief he is so conditioned that he really cannot do what he thinks he cannot do. For while thinking that he cannot do this or that, he is not determined to do it, and consequently it is impossible that he should do it.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

True virtue is nothing else but living in accordance with reason.

True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real.

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 wholly inadequate to meet such a call.

Those who are believed to be most self-abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious.

Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.

There is no cause from whose nature some effect does not follow.

There can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.