Nicholas Of Cusa Quotes

All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach.

Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in divinity.

God says to man: 'Be thou thyself, and I shall be thine.'

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

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

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

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.

Since beings desire to exist, because to exist is a good thing: they desire the One without which they cannot exist.

In every science certain things must be accepted as first principles if the subject matter is to be understood; and these first postulates rest upon faith.

In creating the world, God used arithmetic, geometry, and likewise astronomy.

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

The rational is apprehended through the intellect, however, the intellect is not found in the region of the rational; the intellect is as the eye and the rational as the colors.

The fact is that man has no longing for any other nature but desires only to be perfect in his own.

For all the [body's] members seek nothing except inseparable union with the intellect, as with their beginning, ultimate good, and everlasting life.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Nor is the darkness of colour a proof of the earth's baseness; for the brightness of the sun, which is visible to us, would not be perceived by anyone who might be in the sun.