33 quotes
The most competent physician of our world advises the patient to listen to an ignorant doctor who the patient thinks is very competent rather than to a competent doctor who the patient thinks is ignorant.
The Other World (1657)
If our soul, then, is no longer His image, we still do not resemble Him by our hands, feet, mouth, face and ears any more than the cabbage does by its leaves, flowers, stem, heart or head.
The Other World (1657)
After a while the press of business in the province put an end to our philosophizing, and I returned with increased determination to my plans to fly to the Moon.
The Other World (1657)
The angel had told me in my dream that if I wanted to acquire the perfect knowledge I desired, I would have to go to the Moon. There I would find Adam's paradise and the Tree of Knowledge.
The Other World (1657)
A man contains all that is needed to make up a tree; likewise, a tree contains all that is needed to make up a man. Thus, finally, all things meet in all things, but we need a Prometheus to distill it.
The Other World (1657)
"I think the Moon is a world like this one, and the Earth is its moon."
My friends greeted this with a burst of laughter. "And maybe," I told them, "someone on the Moon is even now making fun of someone else who says that our globe is a world."
The Other World (1657)
How unfortunate a country is where the marks of generation are ignominious and those of annihilation are honorable! And you call that member one of the 'shameful parts', as though anything were more glorious than to give life and anything more infamous than to take it away.
The Other World (1657)
Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king's torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street.
The Other World (1657)
One day, my male companion (they took me for the female) told me what had really caused him to wander about the world and finally to leave it for the Moon. He had not been able to find a single country where the imagination was free.
The Other World (1657)
You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand.
The Other World (1657)
The people of your world became so stupid and rude that my companions and I no longer enjoyed teaching them. You must surely have heard of us: we were called oracles, nymphs, spirits, fairies, household gods, lemures, larvas, lamias, sprites, water-nymphs, incubi, shades, spirits of the dead, specters and ghosts.
The Other World (1657)
The apple of knowledge is not far from here. As soon as you've eaten it, you'll know as much as I do. But be careful not to make any mistakes: most of the apples hanging from that tree are enveloped in a thick skin. If you taste it, you will be brought low, beneath man; the inner part of the fruit will bring you up to the level of an angel.
The Other World (1657)
On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages.
The Other World (1657)