Paracelsus

“For it is we who must pray for our daily bread, and if He grants it to us, it is only through our labour, our skill and preparation.”

“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.”

“Be not another, if you can be yourself.”

“What sense would it make or what would it benfit a physician if he discovered the origin of the diseases but could not cure or alleviate them?”

“Medicine rests upon four pillars - philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics.”

“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.”

“For God, who is in heaven, is in man. Where else can heaven be, if not in man? As we need it, it must be within us. Therefore it knows our prayer even before we have uttered it, for it is closer to our hearts than to our”

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

“The interpretation of dreams is a great art.”

“A mortal lives not through that breath that flows in and that flows out. The source of his life is another and this causes the breath to flow.”

“Death is the midwife of very great things.... It brings about the birth and rebirth of forms a thousand times improved. This is the highest mystery of God.”

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

“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?”

“Often the remedy is deemed the highest good because it helps so many.”

“Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow.”

“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.”

“Nature also forges man, now a gold man, now a silver man, now a fig man, now a bean man.”

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

“This is alchemy, and this is the office of Vulcan; he is the apothecary and chemist of the medicine.”

“Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.”