Talk:Paracelsus


 * So long as we do not blow our brains out, we have decided life is worth living.

This quote seems unlikely as guns were not common household items in the early 1500s, pistols even less so. Can we get a source? Rmhermen 13:07, 4 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Nothing but the usual web suspects, like BrainyQuote.com. Many other websites cite it as coming from Edgar Watson Howe. (Howe, at least, appears to be a 19th/20th-century quotee.) Neither Bartlett (1980) nor Oxford (1999) have this quote under anyone's name. &mdash; Jeff Q (talk) 16:27, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced

 * 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.


 * All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy.


 * God did not create the planets and stars with the intention that they should dominate man, but that they, like other creatures, should obey and serve him.


 * Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.


 * Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided.
 * 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.


 * So I have been a wanderer all my life, alone and a stranger feeling alien.


 * That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it ... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.

He is not to look to that which can be seen, for we are not called upon to extinguish the smoke but the fire itself
 * '''The physician should look for the force and nature of illness at its source.


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


 * The human body is vapor materialized by sunshine mixed with the life of the stars.


 * Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal. Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him. ... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth.

All things are poison
The English is usually given as something along the lines as "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; but the dose makes it clear that a thing is not a poison." Paracelsus did not write in English, and this is one of his most famous quotations, so we should include the original language. The German is "Alle Dinge sind Gift und nichts ist ohne Gift, allein die Dosis machts, dass ein Ding kein Gift sei." (All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose makes a thing be not a poison). The quotation is from the book Septem Defensiones (1538). From http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Paracelsus/Septem+Defensiones/Die+dritte+Defension+wegen+des+Schreibens+der+neuen+Rezepte Although the title of the book is Latin, the earliest texts I can find are in German. There is a Latin version, but I don't know whether it's the original. "Omnia certe venenosa, nihil quod veneno careat, Unica Dosis est, quae veneno caret, & rem per se venenosam, sana ac utilem reddit." (All things are certainly poisonous, nothing which lacks poison, it is the dose alone which lacks poison, and renders a thing in itself poisonous, wholesome and useful). From https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10174139?q=%28paracelsus+septem+defensiones%29&page=80,81 on the pages numbered 34-35 in the original text, but 80-81 of the electronic scan. 69.161.125.36 19:18, 17 August 2023 (UTC)