In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

The safest way for a state is to lay down the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely have to do with actions, but that every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.

The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

God is not He who is, but That which is.

But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing.

...The body is affected by the image of the thing, in the same way as if the thing were actually present.