Marsilio Ficino Quotes

In these times I don't, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know.

Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.

Never worry about anything. Live in the present. Live now. Be happy.

The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.

Mortal men ask God for good things every day, but they never pray that they may make good use of them.

. . . the poor man, whom the law does not allow to take . . . a pair of shoes for his freezing feet, is allowed to put his hand into the pocket of the rich, and say, You shall educate me. . . .

Artists in each of the arts seek after and care for nothing but love.

Books that distribute things... with as daring a freedom as we use in dreams, put us on our feet again.

Many have paid lip service to philosophy, but these men served it with their whole heart. He tastes nothing who has not tasted for himself.

The ideas of things intellectually known pass into the substance of the intellect much more than do foods into the substance of the body.

You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not.

Everyone believes that he abounds in wisdom, but is short of money.

Wealth begins . . . in giving on all sides by tools and auxiliaries the greatest possible extension to our powers; as if it added feet and hands and eyes and blood. . . .

The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man.

Law it is . . . which hears without ears, sees without eyes, moves without feet and seizes without hands.

. . . if [writing] lift you from your feet with the great voice of eloquence, then the effect is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the minds of men; . . .

What is odious but . . . people . . . who toast their feet on the register. . . .

Who can wonder at the attractiveness... of the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator?

No man can claim to usurp more than a few cubic feet of the audibilities of a public room. . . .

Laurel crowns cleave to deserts And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; . . .