The ideas of things intellectually known pass into the substance of the intellect much more than do foods into the substance of the body.
Marsilio FicinoThere is a moment in the history of every nation, when . . . the perceptive powers reach their ripeness and have not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that instant . . . with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar and stellar creation.
Marsilio FicinoThe 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.
Marsilio Ficino