Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow. – Baruch Spinoza
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf. – Baruch Spinoza
To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole. – Baruch Spinoza
Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”