Paracelsus Quotes
Theophrastus von Hohenheim, who took the Latinized name Paracelsus, was a Swiss-German physician, alchemist, and natural philosopher and one of the principal figures in the early-modern revolt against Galenic medicine. He worked as an army surgeon, mining doctor, and itinerant healer across Europe, and was briefly municipal physician and lecturer at Basel until his attacks on the medical establishment forced him to flee. The quotes below are attributed to Paracelsus, organized by topic.
Browse Paracelsus by topic
Paracelsus on Death
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“We have Divine Wisdom in the mortal body.Whatever does harm to the body, ruins the House of the Eternal.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992) -
“What we should be after death, we have to attain in life, i.e. holiness and bliss. Here on earth the Kingdom of God begins.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992)
Paracelsus on Freedom
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“If you have been given a talent, exercise it freely and happily like the sun: give everyone from your splendour.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992)
Paracelsus on God
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“All is interrelated. Heaven and earth, air and water. All are but one thing; not four, not two and not three, but one. Where they are not together, there is only an incomplete piece.”
Paracelsus - Collected Writings Vol. I (1926) edited by Bernhard Aschner, p. 110 -
“God has given to all things their course and decided how high and how far they may go, not higher, not lower.”
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“God, our Father, has given us the life and the art of healing to protect and maintain it.”
Wikiquote -
“Practice humility at first with man and only then before God. He who despises man, has also no respect for God.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992) -
“We should become angels and not devils, that’s why we have been created and born into the world. Therefore be and stick to what God has chosen you for.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992) -
“In us there is the Light of Nature, and that Light is God.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992)
Paracelsus on Knowledge
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Attributed to Paracelsus:
“He who would heal must first know himself.”
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Attributed to Paracelsus:
“Medicine is not only science but also wisdom and love.”
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“Hermetic and Alchemical Writings (1894), edited by Arthur Edward Waite; Coelum Philosophorum or Book of Vexations , originally 1543”
Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot appear on account of that which conceals it. The good is least good whilst it is thus concealed. The concealment must be removed so that the good may be able freely to appear in its own brightness. For example, the mountain, the sand, the earth, or the stone in which a metal has grown is such a concealment. Each one of the visible metals -
“As you talk, so is your heart.”
Wikiquote -
“Belief and work, knowledge and action are one and the same thing.”
Wikiquote -
“Consider that we shouldn’t call our brother a fool, since we don’t know ourselves what we are.”
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“He who conquers his enemy with meekness, wins fame.”
Wikiquote -
“What maintains the marriage and what is it? Only the knowledge of the hearts, that is its beginning and end.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992)
Paracelsus on Love
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Attributed to Paracelsus:
“What the eye sees not and the heart loves not, the head will not labor for.”
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“What else is the help of medicine than love?”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992)
Paracelsus on Nature
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“All things are poison; the dose alone makes the poison.”
The Third Defense -
Attributed to Paracelsus:
“Nature is the great teacher; the physician is her translator.”
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“Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot appear on account of that which conceals it. The good is least good whilst it is thus concealed. The concealment must be removed so that the good may be able freely to appear in its own brightness. For example, the mountain, the sand, the earth, or the stone in which a metal has grown is such a concealment. Each one of the visible metals is a concealment of the other six metals.”
Hermetic and Alchemical Writings (1894), edited by Arthur Edward Waite; Coelum Philosophorum or Book of Vexations , originally 1543 -
“Who else is the enemy of Nature but he who mistakes himself for more intelligent than Nature, though it is the highest school for all of us?”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992)
Paracelsus on Truth
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“The art of medicine has its roots in the heart. If your heart is false, then also the doctor in you is false. If it is fair, then also the doctor is fair.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time(1992)