Nicholas Of Cusa Quotes

In God, absolute unity is absolute multiplicity, absolute identity is absolute diversity; absolute actuality is absolute potentiality.

When all my endeavor is turned toward Thee because all Thy endeavor is turned toward me; when I look unto Thee alone with all my attention, nor ever turn aside the eyes of my mind, because thou dost enfold me with Thy constant regard; when I direct my love toward Thee alone because Thou, who art Love’s self hast turned Thee toward me alone. And what, Lord, is my life, save that embrace wherein Thy delightsome sweetness doth so lovingly enfold me?

Nicholas of Cusa said we have to be educated into our ignorance or else the full presence of the divine will be kept at bay. We have to arrive at that difficult point where we don’t know what is going on or what we can do. That precise point is an opening to true faith. The

Unde erit machina mundi quasi habens undique centrum et nullibi circumferentiam, quoniam eius circumferentia et centrum est Deus, qui est undique et nullibi. / The machine of the world will have its centre everywhere, so to speak, and its circumference nowhere, because its circumference and its centre are God, who is everywhere and nowhere.

Every constitution is rooted in natural law and cannot be valid if it contradicts it.

Of wisdom, therefore, which all men by nature desire to know and seek with such mental application, one can know only that it is higher than all knowledge and thus unknowable, unutterable in any words, unintelligible to any intellect, unmeasurable by any measure, unlimitable by any limit ... unaffirmable by any affirmation, undeniable by any negation, indubitable by any doubt, and no opinion can be held about it.

Galileo's Two New Sciences was in certain respects one long raspberry at the Inquisition, whose treatment of G.G. is infamous. Part of this agenda was to have the dialogue's straight man act as a spokesman for Aristotelian metaphysics and Church credenda and to have his more enlightened partner slap him around intellectually. One of the main targets is Aristotle's ontological division of (infinity) into actual and potential, which the Church has basically morphed into the doctrine that only God is Actually Infinite and nothing else in His creation can be. Example: Galileo ridicules the idea that the number of parts that any line segment can be divided into is only 'potentially' (meaning unreal-ly) infinite by showing that if you bend the segment into a circle-which, 'a la Nicholas of Cusa, is defined as a regular polygon with a (infinity) of sides-you have "reduced to actuality that infinite number of parts into which you claimed, while it was straight, were contained in it only potentially.

Not-other is not other; nor is it other than other; nor is it other in an other. [These points are true] for no other reason than that [Not-other is] Not-other, which cannot in any way be an other— as if something were lacking to it, as to an other. Because other is other than something, it lacks that than which it is other. But because Not-other is not other than anything, it does not lack anything, nor can anything exist outside of it. Hence, without Not-other no thing can be spoken of or thought of, because it would not be spoken of or thought of through that without which, since it precedes all things, no thing can exist or be known. Accordingly, in itself Not-other is seen antecedently and as absolutely no other than itself; and in an other it is seen as not other than this other.

Many mystics are like Nicholas (of Cusa) in saying that you have divinity inside you; it is not only outside. If you go deep enough into yourself, you will come up against mysterious creative forces. You can't know yourself completely, and you may realize, again as mystics have pointed out, that some of your problems stem from your resistance against that deep, unknown source of vitality. If you could get out of the way, who knows what you could become? The divine creator not only makes a world but also creates a self.

Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Thomas à Kempis, von Hügel, Finney, Wesley

When all my endeavour is turned toward Thee because all Thy endeavour is turned toward me; when I look unto Thee alone with all my attention, nor ever turn aside the eyes of my mind, because Thou dost enfold me with Thy constant regard; when I direct my love toward Thee alone because Thou, who art Love’s self hast turned Thee toward me alone. And what, Lord, is my life, save that embrace wherein Thy delightsome sweetness doth so lovingly enfold me?”[1] So wrote Nicholas of Cusa four hundred years ago.

The Blessed Host corresponds to the troop of Dame Abundia; Bensozia; Bonae res; Percht; and, in Italy, Madonna Horiente, who, around 1380–1390, the Milanese Inquisitor Fra Beltramino de Cernuscullo identified as Diana and Herodias or the bona domina Richella whom Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) notes was one with Dame Fortune (Richella quasi Fortuna) and with Hulda, the Frau Holle of German traditions.

In 1457, Nicholas of Cusa, bishop of Bressanone (Brixen), conducted an investigation of two woman from the Val di Fassa who claimed to form part of the retinue of Mistress Richella, interpreted, and the two claimed this individual was the demon Diana from the Canon Episcopi,38 but Richella means “she who presides over fortune.” The regions that sit in both Italy and Austria also have different troops that haunt the night. One is called Game of the Devil (Zogo del Diavolo), that of souls in perdition, and another is called della Signora, donna del Bon Zogo, Mistress of the Good Game.

THE GREATEST DISORDER COMES FROM ABUSES ON THE PART OF THE HEAD, WHEN SUPERIORS USURP THE POWER OF THOSE UNDER THEM.

The "coincidance" of Michael Cusack and Nicholas of Cusa and John Cusack and Henry Flower across space-time could not have been known in full to Joyce's conscious mind, of course, which is why any theory of Joyce's novels must take into account the reality of the non-local function he abbreviates as .

We surmise, that in the solar region there are inhabitants which are more solar, brilliant, illustrious, and intellectual—being even more spiritlike than [those] on the moon, where [the inhabitants] are more moonlike, and than [those] on the earth, [where they are] more material and more solidified . . . We believe this on the basis of the fiery influence of the sun and on the basis of the watery and aerial influence of the moon and the weighty material influence of the earth. In like manner, we surmise that none of the other regions of the stars are empty of inhabitants—as if there were as many particular mondial parts of the one universe as there are stars, of which there is no number.

Since all are free by nature, all government, whether by written law or a prince, is based solely on the agreement and consent of the subject. For if by nature men are equally powerful and free, true and ordered power in the hands of one can be established only by the election and consent of the others, just as law also is established by consent . . . It is clear, therefore, that the binding validity of all constitutions is based on tacit or express agreement and consent.

And yet today we face options similar to the ones exemplified by Pius II and Nicholas of Cusa—weapons or words (and a few other options as well, of course). It will pay to look carefully at why the great cardinal preferred dialogue and how he went about thinking through the thorny theological issues about God that spring up as soon as the dialogue begins.