The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.
Baruch SpinozaRead
A miracle signifies nothing more than an event... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or.... which the narrator is unable to explain.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A miracle is simply an event that cannot be easily explained by known causes or experiences.
In this quote, Spinoza suggests that the concept of a miracle is rooted in the inability of observers to rationalize specific extraordinary events using familiar explanations. This highlights the limitations of human understanding and the ways in which unexplained phenomena can be perceived as miraculous when they fall outside the realm of common experience or scientific reasoning.
Themes
MiracleEventExplanationPhilosophyUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical discussion on the nature of reality, this quote can emphasize the limitations of human perception.
More from Baruch Spinoza
All quotes βA 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 SpinozaRead
He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.
Baruch SpinozaRead
No one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion.
Baruch SpinozaRead
Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear. [They are the two sides of a coin, so learning how to manage fear through learning, understanding, rationality, controlled imagination, preparation, mental focus (including distraction) and a gratitude attitude is very helpful.]
Baruch SpinozaRead
He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully
Baruch SpinozaRead
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All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood.
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Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.
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What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
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A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
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Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
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Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.
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