Thomas Vaughan Quotes

They dwell altogether in the face, their endeavors are meer titillations, & their acquaintance with Nature is not at the heart.

If thou wilt not quit thy Aristotle, let not any prejudice hinder thy further search.

It happened in exposing my former discourse to censure, (a custom hath strangled many truths in the cradle) that a learned man suggested to me some bad opinion he had of my author, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. I ever understood it was not one but many in whose sentiment that miracle suffered.

Learn from thy errors to be infallible, from thy misfortunes to be constant. There is nothing stronger than perseverance, for it ends in miracles.

The peripateticks when they define the soul or some inferior principle describe it only by outward circumstances, which every child can do, but they state nothing essentially.

The earth which is the visible, natural basis of it represents the gross, carnal parts. The element of water answers to the blood, for in it the pulse of the Great World beats: this most men call the flux and reflux, but they know not the true cause of it. The air is the outward refreshing spirit, where this vast creature breathes though invisibly, yet not altogether insensibly.

He did therefore hatch the matter and bring out the secret essences, as a chick is brought out of the shell, whence that other position of the same Zoroaster: "By one single fire is generated all that is." Neither did He only generate them but He also preserves them now, with perpetual efflux of heat and spirit.

As we know the sun doth not only dispense heat but some other secret influx, so did God also in the creation, and from Him the sun and all the stars received what they have, for God Himself is a supernatural sun or fire, according to that oracle of Zoroaster: "That Architect Who built up the cosmos by His unaided power was Himself another orb of fire." (Factor qui per se operans fabrefecit mundum, Qucedam ignis moles erat altera.)

Magicians were the first attendants our Saviour met withal in this world, and the only philosophers who acknowledged Him in the flesh before that He Himself discovered it. I find God conversant with them, as He was formerly with the patriarchs. He directs them in their travels with a star, as He did the Israelites with a pillar of fire. He informs them of future dangers in their dreams (129)

They are things beyond reasoning sensible, practical truths, not mere vagaries and rambles of the brain.

She hath several ways to break up house, but her best is without a disease. This is her mystical walk, an exit only to return.

It is an age wherein truth is near a miscarriage, and it is enough for me that I have appeared thus far for it, in a day of necessity.

Notwithstanding I acknowledge the schoolmen ingenious: they conceive their principles irregular, and prescribe rules for method, though they want matter.

That I should profess magic in this discourse and justify the professors of it withal is impiety with many but religion, with me. It is a conscience that I have learned from authors greater than myself and scriptures greater than both.

Their philosophy is like a church, that is all discipline, and no doctrine