Q0238

Baruch Spinoza

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.
Thinker Baruch Spinoza
School Rationalism
Source Ethics V, Prop. 42
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Ethics V, Prop. 42, within the tradition of Rationalism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Baruch Spinoza's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Baruch Spinoza. (n.d.). Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0238

MLA: Baruch Spinoza. “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0238.

Chicago: Baruch Spinoza. “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0238.

Same thinker

More from Baruch Spinoza

  1. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
  2. God, or Nature.
  3. It is of the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity.
  4. The true end of the state is in reality freedom.
  5. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death.

All quotations by Baruch Spinoza

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme