32 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.

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

A sturdy lad . . . who teams it, farms it . . . and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls.

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

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?

Laurel crowns cleave to deserts And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; . . .