Everyone endeavors as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates... This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking.
Baruch SpinozaA man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
Baruch SpinozaThe greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.
Baruch SpinozaI believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God.
Baruch SpinozaMan can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.
Baruch Spinoza