Great Throughts Treasury

"Nothing that is founded on envy can thrive; it must have another root."

"Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy."

"Of ceremonies you should know that they are superfluous; for if we are to receive something from God, He looks into our hearts and not at the ceremonies. If we have received something of Him, He does not wish us to use it for ceremonies but works."

"You should practice humility first toward man, and only then toward God. He who despises men has no respect for God."

"Thus we men, as God transmutes himself into one, we likewise on earth should resign ourselves and become one."

"Alchemy is the art that separates what is useful from what is not by transforming it into its ultimate matter and essence. "

"Every creature has its own food, and an appropriate alchemist with the task of dividing it ... The alchemist takes the food and changes it into a tincture which he sends through the body to become blood and flesh. This alchemist dwells in the stomach where he cooks and works. The man eats a piece of meat, in which is both bad and good. When the meat reaches the stomach, there is the alchemist who divides it. What does not belong to health he casts away to a special place, and sends the good wherever it is needed. That is the Creator's decree... That is the virtue and power of the alchemist in man. "

"If the physician understands things exactly and sees and recognizes all illnesses in the macrocosm outside man, and if he has a clear idea of man and his whole nature, then and only then is he a physician. Then he may approach the inside of man; then he may examine his urine, take his pulse, and understand where each thing belongs. This would not be possible without profound knowledge of the outer man, who is nothing other than heaven and earth. "

"I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc. "

"All substances are poisonous, there is none that is not a poison; the right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy. "

"In matters eternal it is Belief that makes all works visible, in matters corporeal it is the light of Nature that reveals things invisible. "

"Man is a seed and the world is his apple; and just as the seed fares in the apple, so does man fare in the world, which surrounds him. "

"But is not He who created it for the sake of the sick body more than the remedy? And is not He who cures the soul, which is more than the body, greater?"

"From time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sleep and in dreams, so that at all times they ardently desired them."

"Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics. The first pillar is the philosophical knowledge of earth and water; the second, astronomy, supplies its full understanding of that which is of fiery and airy nature; the third is an adequate explanation of the properties of all the four elements—that is to say, of the whole cosmos—and an introduction into the art of their transformations; and finally, the fourth shows the physician those virtues which must stay with him up until his death, and it should support and complete the three other pillars. "

"This means that each country, in addition to the general properties common to the whole world, also has its own specific properties."

"The interpretation of dreams is a great art."

"The dreams which reveal the supernatural are promises and messages that God sends us directly: they are nothing but His angels, His ministering spirits , who usually appear to us when we are in a great predicament."

"If we want to make a statement about a man's nature on the basis of his physiognomy, we must take everything into account; it is in his distress that a man is tested, for then his nature is revealed."

"The physician must give heed to the region in which the patient lives, that is to say, to its type and peculiarities."

"We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself."

"Dreams are not without meaning wherever thay may come from-from fantasy, from the elements, or from other inspiration."

"What the eyes perceive in herbs or stones or trees is not yet a remedy; the eyes see only the dross."

"Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence."

"He who is born in imagination discovers the latent forces of Nature. . . . Besides the stars that are established, there is yet another -- Imagination -- that begets a new star and a new heaven."

"Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death. Nature knows this; and Nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster."

"Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided."

"Medicine is not merely a science but an art. The character of the physician may act more powerfully upon the patient than the drugs employed."

"That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourselves."

"The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature, with an open mind."

"The human spirit is so great a thing that no man can express it; could we rightly comprehend the mind of man nothing would be impossible to us upon the earth."

"The realms of nature are the letters, and man is the word that is composed of these letters. "

"The physician is only the servant of nature, not her master. Therefore, it behooves medicine to follow the will of nature."

"The universities do not teach all things, so a doctor must seek out old wives, gipsies, sorcerers, wandering tribes, old robbers, and such outlaws and take lessons from them."

"Thoughts are free and are subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature. "

"Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal. Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him. For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth."

"He who knows nothing, loves nothing. He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees … The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love.… Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes."

"Be not another, if you can be yourself. "

"Belief and work, knowledge and action are one and the same thing."

"As you talk, so is your heart."

"Let no man belong to another that can belong to himself."

"He who wants to govern must have insight into the hearts of men and act accordingly."

"Nothing is hidden so much that it wouldn’t be revealed through its fruit."

"If you have been given a talent, exercise it freely and happily like the sun: give everyone from your splendour."

"Consider that we shouldn’t call our brother a fool, since we don’t know ourselves what we are."

"What maintains the marriage and what is it? Only the knowledge of the hearts, that is its beginning and end."

"We have Divine Wisdom in the mortal body.Whatever does harm to the body, ruins the House of the Eternal."

"What else is the help of medicine than love?"

"Practice humility at first with man and only then before God. He who despises man, has also no respect for God."

"The art of medicine has its roots in the heart. If your heart is false, then also the doctor in you is false. If it is fair, then also the doctor is fair."