Quotes from Marsilio Ficino

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Saturn seems to have impressed the seal of melancholy on me from the beginning.

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

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.

. . . 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; . . .

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

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

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

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.

The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.

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.

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

At every person's birth, he or she is assigned a certain daemon by his own star, a guardian of life to help with his destined task.

People always live badly today; they only live well tomorrow. For the sake of ambition they strive against each other with evil deeds, but the path to glory would be easier to tread by doing good to one another. Although they always speak evil, they hope to be well spoken of themselves; although they do evil, they hope to receive good. We proclaim that we are the authors of good, but that God is the author of evil.