Great Throughts Treasury

"Even though you are designated in terms of different religions, yet you presuppose in all of this diversity one religion which you call wisdom."

"Humanity will one day find that it is not a diversity of creeds but the very same creed which is everywhere proposed. There can not be but one wisdom. Humans must therefore all agree that there is but one most imple wisdom whose power is infinite. And everyone in explaining the intensity of this beauty must discover that it is a supreme and terrible beauty."

"We have to find ways to unlearn those things that screen us from the perception of profound truth. We have to achieve the child's unknowing because we have been made so smart."

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

"By [free will] I can either enlarge or restrict my capacity for Thy grace."

"To know and to think, to see the truth with the eye of the mind, is always a joy… As love is the life of the heart, so is the endeavor after knowledge and truth the life of the mind."

"God's simplicity precedes both all that can be named and all that cannot."

"God, therefore, is the one most simple essence of the entire universe."

"Since God is not knowable in this world, where reason, opinion, and teaching lead us, by means of symbols, from the better known to the unknown, God is grasped only where persuadings leave off and faith enters in. Through faith we are rapt in simplicity so that, while in a body incorporeally, because in spirit, and in the world not in a worldly manner but celestially."

"There are not many beginnings but there is a single Beginning, prior to multitude. But if you were to say that the beginnings are plural apart from their partaking of the One, that statement would self-destruct. For, surely, these plural beginnings would be both alike, by virtue of their not partaking of the One, and not alike, by virtue of their not partaking of the One."

"When Eternity is considered to be the Beginning, then our speaking of the Beginning of the Begun is nothing but our speaking of the Eternity of the Eternal or our speaking of the Eternity of the Begun."

"When according to all its intellectual powers our spirit turns by faith to the purest and eternal truth, to which it subordinates all else, and when it chooses and loves this truth as alone worthy of being loved, then, indeed, there is a turning of our spirit. "

"Strive to seek God with the most diligent vision, for God who is everywhere is impossible not to find if God is sought in the right way... God is rightly sought to the end that, in keeping with God's name, praise of God may reach the limits of the power of our earthly nature."

"Who could understand how all things, though different contingently, are the image of that single, infinite Form... The infinite form is received only in a finite way; consequently, every creature is, as it were, a finite infinity or a created god, so that it exists in the way in which this could best be. It is as if the Creator had spoken: "Let it be made," and because God, who is eternity itself, could not be made, that was made which could be made, which would be as much like God as possible. The inference, therefore, is that every created thing as such is perfect, even if by comparison to others it seems less perfect. For the most merciful God communicates being to all in the manner in which it can be received... Therefore, every created being finds its rest in its own perfection, which it freely holds from the divine being. It desires to be no other created being, as if something else were more perfect, but rather it prefers that which it itself holds, as if a divine gift, from the maximum, and it wishes its own possession to be perfected and preserved incorruptibly."

"Eternal life is naught else than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest to behold me, yea, even the secret places of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life: It is unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle my yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of the dew of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to make it increase and endure."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"That that which is neither true nor truthlike does not exist. Now, whatever exists, exists otherwise in something else than it exists in itself."

"Therefore, in the Beginning, which is Truth, all things are Eternal Truth itself."

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

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

"Through itself the soul arrives at all harmony that is perceptible in otherness—just as through what is internal the soul arrives at what is external."

"Every angle acknowledges that it is a likeness of true angularity, for [each angle] is angle not insofar as angle exists in itself but insofar as angle exists in something else, viz., in a surface. And so, true angularity is present in creatable and depictable angles as in a likeness of itself."

"A line partakes of the simplicity of a point more than does a surface; and a surface [partakes thereof more] than does a material object—as was evident. From this consideration of a point and a material object elevate yourself unto a likeness of True Being and of the universe; and by means of [this] quite clear symbolism [of a point] make a conjecture about what has been said."

"Life and perfection, joy and repose and whatever all the senses desire, lie in the distinguishing spirit, and from it they have everything that they have. Even if the organs lose in power and the life in them decreases in activity, it does not decrease in the distinguishing spirit, from which they receive the same life, when the fault or infirmity is removed."

"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?"

"For reason’s measurements, which attain unto temporal things, do not attain unto things that are free from time—just as hearing does not attain unto whatever is not-audible, even though these things exist and are unattainable by hearing."

"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."

"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."

"When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us we shall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping with the promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune God will be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road of simple duty here among men. We will have found life’s summum bonum indeed."

"We see that God has implanted in all things a natural desire to exist with the fullest measure of existence that is compatible with their particular nature. To this end they are endowed with suitable faculties and activities; and by means of these there is in them a discernment that is natural and in keeping with the purpose of their knowledge, which ensures their natural inclination serving its purpose and being able to reach its fulfilment in that object towards which it is attracted by the weight of its own nature."

"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."

"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"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Since by nature all men are free, all government – whether based on written law or on law embodied in a ruler through whose government the subjects are restrained from evil deeds and their liberty regulated, for a good end by fear of punishment – arises solely from agreement and consent of the subjects."

"Now I behold as in a mirror, in an icon, in a riddle, life eternal, for that is naught other than that blessed regard wherewith Thou never ceasest most lovingly to behold me, yea, even the secret places of my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life; 'tis unceasingly to impart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee by love's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindle my yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing to make it increase and endure. 'Tis to cause me to share Thine immortality. . . . For it is the absolute maximum of every rational desire, than which a greater cannot be."

"All enquiry consists in comparative proportion, easy or difficult, and that is why the infinite, which as infinite escapes all proportion, is unknown. . . . [And] wisdom is hidden, and also the seat of intelligence, from the eyes of the living."

"Therefore the understanding, which is not truth, never attains truth with such precision that it cannot be attained more precisely by the infinite; for it is to truth as the polygon is to the circle: the greater the number of angles inscribed in the polygon, the more it will be like the circle, but nevertheless it is never made equal to the circle, even if one multiplies the angles indefinitely."

"God is an infinite circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

"Ability doth hit the mark where presumption over-shooteth and diffidence falleth short."

"What suits the divine Mind as infinite Truth suits our mind as its close image. If all things are in the divine Mind as in their exact and proper Truth, all things are in our mind as in the image or likeness of their proper Truth, that is, as known; for knowledge takes place by likeness. All things are in God, but there as exemplars of things. All things are in our mind, but there as likenesses of things."

"O Lord, when you look upon me with an eye of graciousness, what is your seeing, other than your being seen by me? In seeing me, you who are deus absconditus [hidden God] give yourself to be seen by me. No one can see You except insofar as you grant that you be seen. To see you is not other than that you see the one who sees you. "

"You know how the divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this enfolding Simplicity. If, then, you called this divine Simplicity infinite Mind, it will be the exemplar of our mind. If you called the divine mind the totality of the truth of things, you will call our mind the totality of the assimilation of things, so that it may be a totality of ideas. In the divine Mind conception is the production of things; in our mind conception is the knowledge of things. If the divine Mind is absolute Being, then its conception is the creation of beings; and conception in the human mind is the assimilation of beings."

"Not Other is not an other, nor is it other than any other, nor is it an other in an other—for no other reason than that it is Not Other, which can in no way be other, as if it something were lacking to it, as to an other. For an other which is other than something lacks that than which it is other. But Not Other, because it is not other than anything, does not lack anything nor can anything be outside it."