Ethics (Complete Edition)

Things which have nothing in common cannot be understood,

Things which have nothing in common cannot be understood,

That which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived through itself.

Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.

That thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. On the other hand, that thing is necessary, or rather constrained, which is determined by something external to itself to a fixed and definite method of existence or action.

in eternity there is no such thing as when, before, or after

if things had been brought into being in any other way, we should have to assign to God a nature different from that, which we are bound to attribute to him from the consideration of an absolutely perfect being

thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge.

A thing is called necessary either in respect to its essence or in respect to its cause; for the existence of a thing necessarily follows, either from its essence and definition, or from a given efficient cause.

more clearly than the sun at noonday, that there is nothing to justify us in calling things contingent