“He who is guided by Fear, and does good to avoid evil, is not guided by reason” (Ethics, book IV, proposition 63, Collected Works vol. 1, Curley trans., p. 582).
“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death” (book IV, proposition 67, p. 584).
“The more we understand singular things, the more we understand God” (book V, proposition 24, p. 608).
“The Mind’s intellectual Love of God is the very Love of God by which God loves himself, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he can be explained by the human Mind’s essence, considered under a species of eternity; i.e., the Mind’s intellectual Love of God is part of the infinite Love by which God loves himself” (book V, proposition 36, p. 612).
“Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; nor do we enjoy it because we restrain our lusts; on the contrary, because we enjoy it, we are able to restrain them” (book V, proposition 42, p. 616).
The Postmodern Peripatetic 