Giordano Bruno Quotes

What can be more stupid than to be in pain about future things and absent ones which at present are not felt?

Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres; in these you finally imprison your own minds, so that you appear to me but as parrots in a cage, while I watch you dancing up and down, turning and hopping within those circles.

I fought, and therefore, believed in my victory. There is more to the fact that I didn't fear death and preferred a brave death instead of a life of an idiot.

The beginning, middle, and end of the birth, growth, and perfection of whatever we behold is from contraries, by contraries, and to contraries; and whatever contrariety is, there is action and reaction, there is motion, diversity, multitude, and order, there are degrees, succession and vicissitude.

In this infinite space is placed our universe (whether by chance, by necessity, or by providence I do not now consider).

It is unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death.

I who am in the night will move into the day.

I await your sentence with less fear than you pass it. The time will come when all will see what I see.

There is no law governing all things.

Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.

Perhaps your fear in passing judgement is greater than mine in receiving it.

With luck on your side, you can do without brains.

There is one basic cause of all effects.

I do not know when, but I know that many have come in this century to develop arts and sciences, sow the seeds of a new culture that will flourish, unexpected, sudden, just when the power is deluded into believing they have won.

The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.

That which we have lived is nothing; that which we live is a point; that which we have to live is not yet a point, but may be a point which, together, shall be and shall have been.

Nature is none other than God in all things. Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; Whence all of God is in all things.

The wise soul feareth not death; rather she sometimes striveth for death, she goeth beyond to meet her. Yet eternity maintaineth her substance throughout time, immensity throughout space, universal form throughout motion.

The soul is not the body and it may be in one body or in another, and pass from body to body.

Desire urges me on, while fear bridals me.

I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you.

Nature is none other than God in things. Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; whence all of God is in all things. Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion.

Magicians can do more by means of faith than physicians by the truth.

There is in the universe neither center nor circumference.

There is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call void: in it are unnumerable globes like this on which we live and grow, this space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit.

Our bodily eye findeth never an end, but is vanquished by the immensity of space.

Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned.

Divine love does not weigh down, nor carry his servant captive and enslaved to the lowest depths, but raises him, supports him and magnifies him above all liberty whatsoever.

What you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue; but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own.

The hammers must be swung in cadence, when more than one is hammering the iron.

You explain right well, and you shew that you understand argument and are not a mere sophist since you accept that which cannot be denied.

I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence. Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence.

I have declared infinite worlds to exist beside this our earth. It would not be worthy of God to manifest Himself in less than an infinite universe.

I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite. And while I rise from my own globe to others and penetrate ever further through the eternal field. That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me.

God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

Anything we take in the Universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way, the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.

All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity.

The gems of philosophy are not less precious because they are not understood.

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

The universe is then one, infinite, immobile. ... It is not capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and limitless, and to that extent infinite and indeterminable, and consequently immobile.

Why, I say, do so few understand and apprehend the internal power?... He who in himself sees all things, is all things.

Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.

Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

The soul, in its power, is present in some way in the entire universe, because it apprehends substances which are not included in the body in which it lives, although they are related to it.

We delight in one knowable thing, which comprehends all that is knowable; in one apprehensible, which draws together all that can be apprehended; in a single being that includes all, above all in the one which is itself the all.

The stars in the sky are really other suns like our own, around which orbit other planets. (paraphrase)

In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns.

There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.