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3 ideas
21875 | The wisdom of a free man is a meditation on life, not on death [Spinoza] |
Full Idea: A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. | |
From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 67) | |
A reaction: Life and death are not so easy to separate. You could hardly be wise about life if you didn't incorporate its finite duration into your wisdom. |
17230 | If we are not wholly wise, we should live by good rules and maxims [Spinoza] |
Full Idea: The best thing we can do, so long as we lack a perfect knowledge of our feelings, is to conceive a right rule of life, or sure maxims of life - to commit these to memory, and constantly apply these to particular cases. | |
From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 10) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the role of folk wisdom - to try to plant guidance in the heads of the not-so-wise. |
17200 | We must be careful to keep words distinct from ideas and images [Spinoza] |
Full Idea: It is necessary that we should distinguish between ideas and the words by which things are signified. ...Images, words, and ideas are by many people altogether confounded. | |
From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |