Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused - Benedictus de Spinoza

...They [the Jews] have had the most painful history of all peoples, not without the fault of all of us, and when one owes to them the noblest man (Christ), the purest sage (Spinoza), the most powerful book, and the most effective moral law in the world. [Original in German: Trotzdem möchte ich wissen, wie viel man bei einer Gesamtabrechnung einem Volke nachsehen muß, welches, nicht ohne unser aller Schuld, die leidvollste Geschichte unter allen Völkern gehabt hat, und dem man den edelsten Menschen (Christus), den reinsten Weisen (Spinoza), das mächtigste Buch und das wirkungsvollste Sittengesetz der Welt verdankt.]

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.