1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Marsilio Ficino

Marsilio Ficino Quotes

Marsilio Ficino was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of his day and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, influenced the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy. Wikipedia  

✵ 19. October 1433 – 1. October 1499
Marsilio Ficino photo

Works

Platonic Theology
Marsilio Ficino
Platonic Theology
Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino: 9 quotes10 likes

Famous Marsilio Ficino Quotes

“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.”

Marsilio Ficino

“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.”

Marsilio Ficino

Source: The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, Vol. 3

“The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.”

Marsilio Ficino

“The people who have discovered something important in any of the more noble arts have principally done so when they have abandoned the body and taken refuge in the citadel of the soul.”

Marsilio Ficino book Platonic Theology

Platonic Theology, Book 13, Chapter 2

“The intellect is prompted by nature to comprehend the whole breadth of being. … Under the concept of truth it knows all, and under the concept of the good it desires all.”

Marsilio Ficino

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 199

“When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects. Thus extreme brightness offends the eye, and a very loud noise offends the ears. Mind, however, is otherwise; by its most excellent object it is neither injured nor ever confused. Nay, rather, after this object is known, it distinguishes inferior things at once more clearly and more truly.”

Marsilio Ficino

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 205

“The rational soul in a certain manner possesses the excellence of infinity and eternity. If this were not the case, it would never characteristically incline toward the infinite. Undoubtedly this is the reason that there are none among men who live contentedly on earth and are satisfied with merely temporal possessions.”

Marsilio Ficino

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 202

“The inquiry of the intellect never ceases until it finds that cause of which nothing is the cause but which is itself the cause of causes. This cause is none other than the boundless God. Similarly, the desire of the will is not satisfied by any good, as long as we believe that there is yet another beyond it. Therefore, the will is satisfied only by that one good beyond which there is no further good. What can this good be except the boundless God?”

Marsilio Ficino

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 201

“If someone asks us which of these is more perfect, intellect or sense, the intelligible or the sensible, we shall promise to answer promptly, if he will first give us an answer to the following question. You know, my inquiring friend, that there is some power in you which has a notion of each of these things—a notion, I say, of intellect itself and of sense, of the intelligible and the sensible. This is evident, for the same power which compares these to each other must at that time in a certain manner see both. Tell me, then, whether a power of this kind belongs to intellect or sense? … Sense, as you yourself have shown, can perceive neither itself nor intellect and the objects of intellect; whereas intellect knows both. … Therefore, intellect is not only more perfect than sense but is also, after perfection itself, in the highest degree perfect.”

Marsilio Ficino

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), pp. 203-204

Similar authors

Dante Alighieri photo
Dante Alighieri105
Italian poet None
Thomas Aquinas photo
Thomas Aquinas104
Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catho… None
Francesco Petrarca photo
Francesco Petrarca73
Italian scholar and poet None
Angela of Foligno photo
Angela of Foligno13
Italian saint None
Giovanni Boccaccio photo
Giovanni Boccaccio27
Italian author and poet None
Catherine of Genoa photo
Catherine of Genoa29
Italian author and nurse None
Bonaventure photo
Bonaventure6
franciscan, bishop, cardinal, Doctor of the Church, catholi… None
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius photo
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius22
philosopher of the early 6th century None
Peter Abelard photo
Peter Abelard20
French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent lo… None
Roger Bacon photo
Roger Bacon21
medieval philosopher and theologian None