Nicholas of Cusa Quotes

Quotes about:

• Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Divinity, Way, All Things

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• All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Science, Truth Is, Absolute Truth

  "On Learned Ignorance" by Nicholas of Cusa, 1440.

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• Nothing could be more beneficial for even the most zealous searcher for knowledge than his being in fact most learned in that very ignorance which is peculiarly his own; and the better a man will have known his own ignorance, the greater his learning will be.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Ignorance, Men, Zealous

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• In humility alone lies true greatness, and knowledge and wisdom are profitable only in so far as our lives are governed by them.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Lying, Humility, Greatness

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• God says to man: 'Be thou thyself, and I shall be thine.'

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Karma, Men, Thyself

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• Love is subsequent to knowledge and to the thing known, for nothing unknown is loved.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Love Is, Known

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• In every science certain things must be accepted as first principles if the subject matter is to be understood; and these first postulates rest upon faith.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Faith, Science, Understanding

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• Thou art merciful; when all my endeavour is turned toward Thee because all Thy endeavour is turned toward me; when I look unto Thee alone with all my attention, nor ever turn aside the eyes of my mind, because Thou dost enfold me with Thy constant regard; when I direct my love toward Thee alone because Thou, who art Love's self, hast turned Thee toward me alone. And what, Lord, is my life, save that embrace wherein Thy delightsome sweetness doth so lovingly enfold me?

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Art, Eye, Self

  "The Vision of God".

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• All things are in the intended endpoint, and this mode of being is called will or desire.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Desire, All Things

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• The world has no circumference. It would certainly have a circumference if it had a centre, in which case it would contain within itself its own beginning and end; and that would mean that there was some other thing which imposed a limit to the world - another being existing in space outside the world. All of these conclusions are false. Since, then, the world cannot be enclosed within a material circumference and centre, it is unintelligible without God as its centre and circumference.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Mean, Space, Beginnings And Ends

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• There will be a machina mundi whose centre, so to speak, is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere, for God is its circumference and centre and He is everywhere and nowhere.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Speak, Centre

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• In creating the world, God used arithmetic, geometry, and likewise astronomy.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Creating, World, Astronomy

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• Since beings desire to exist, because to exist is a good thing: they desire the One without which they cannot exist.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Desire, Good Things

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• Time is to eternity as an image is to its exemplar, and those things which are temporal bear a resemblance to those things which are eternal.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Bears, Eternity, Eternal

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• With the senses man measures perceptible things, with the intellect he measures intelligible things, and he attains unto supra-intelligible things transcendently.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Men, Intellect, Senses

  "Cusanus: A Legacy of Learned Ignorance". Book by Peter J. Casarella, 2006.

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• For our intellectual spirit has the power of fire in itself. For no other purpose is it sent by God to the earth than that it glow and grow into a flame. When it is excited by admiration, then it grows, just as if the wind entering into a fire excited its potential to actuality. If we apprehend the works of God, we marvel at eternal wisdom.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Fire, Flames, Wind

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• The fact is that man has no longing for any other nature but desires only to be perfect in his own.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Men, Perfect, Desire

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• If, therefore, man has come into the world to search for God and, if he has found Him, to adhere to Him and to find repose in adhering to Him-man cannot search for Him and attain Him in this sensible and corporeal world, since God is spirit rather than body, and cannot be attained in intellectual abstraction, since one is able to conceive nothing similar to God, as he asserts-how can one, therefore, search for Him in order to find Him?

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Men, Order, Intellectual

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• Those, however, who saw that one cannot attain wisdom and perennial intellectual life, unless it be given through the gift of grace, and that the goodness of the Almighty God is so great that He hears those who invoke His name, and they gain salvation, became humble, acknowledging that they are ignorant, and directed their life as the life of one desiring eternal wisdom. And that is the life of the virtuous, who proceed in the desire for the other life, which is commended by the saints.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Humble, Names, Grace

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• The rational is apprehended through the intellect, however, the intellect is not found in the region of the rational; the intellect is as the eye and the rational as the colors.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Eye, Color, Found

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• But if you search further, you find in yourself nothing similar to God, but rather you affirm that God stands above all this as cause, origin, and the light of life of your intellective soul.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Light, Soul, Causes

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• An external thing that is knowable [is knowable] by means of something internal that is consubstantial [with the rational soul].

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Mean, Soul, Rational

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• Just as all motion is from an unmovable cause, so everything divisible is from an indivisible cause. However, this visible, corporeal world is, assuredly, of a divisible nature, since what is corporeal is divisible. Therefore, this world is from an earlier, indivisible Cause.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  World, Causes, Indivisible

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• If that one is already a great artist, who knows how to educe from a small piece of wood the face of a king or of a queen, an ant or a camel, how great then is the mastery which can form as actuality everything which is in all potentiality? Therefore, God, who is able to produce from the most minute piece of matter the similitude of all forms which can be in this world and in infinitely many worlds, is of admirable subtlety.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Kings, Queens, Artist

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• Within itself the soul sees all things more truly than as they exist in different things outside itself. And the more it goes out unto other things in order to know them, the more it enters into itself in order to know itself.

  Nicholas of Cusa

  Order, Soul, Different

  "Nicholas of Cusa On learned ignorance: a translation and an appraisal of De docta ignorantia". Book by Nicholas of Cusa, translated by Jasper Hopkins, 1981.

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