Ralph Cudworth Quotations

Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigor and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.

Sense is a line, the mind is a circle. Sense is like a line which is the flux of a point running out from itself, but intellect like a circle that keeps within itself.

Now all the knowledge and wisdom that is in creatures, whether angels or men, is nothing else but a participation of that one eternal, immutable and increased wisdom of God.

Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.

If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand.

Even the Atheists ... readily acknowledge it for an indubitable truth, that there must be something ... which was never made or produced -- and which therefore is the cause of those other things that are made, something ... whose existence must needs be necessary.... Wherefore all the question now is, what is this ... self-existent thing, which is the cause of all other things that are made.

Christ was vitoe magister, not scholoe; and he is the best Christian whose heart beats with the purest pulse towards heaven; not he whose head spinneth out the finest cobwebs.

The golden beams of truth and the silken cords of love, twisted together, will draw men on with a sweet violence, whether they will or not.

He that is once "born of God shall overcome the world," and the prince of this world too, by the power of God in him. Holiness is no solitary, neglected thing; it hath stronger confederacies, greater alliances, than sin and wickedness. It is in league with God and the universe; the whole creation smiles upon it; there is something of God in it, and therefore it must needs be a victorious and triumphant thing.

A good conscience is the best looking-glass of heaven.

We have all a propensity to grasp at forbidden fruit.

Christ came not to possess our brains with some cold opinions, that send down a freezing and benumbing influence into our hearts. Christ was a master of the life, not of the school; and he is the best Christian whose heart beats with the purest pulse towards heaven, not he whose head spins the finest cobweb.

True zeal is an ignis lambeus, a soft and gentle flame, that will not scorch one's hand.

The best assurance any one can have of his interest in God, is doubtless the conformity of his soul to Him. When our heart is once turned into a conformity with the mind of God. when we feel our will conformed to His will, we shall then presently perceive a spirit of adoption within ourselves, teaching us to say, "Abba, Father.

Things are sullen, and will be as they are, whatever we think them or wish them to be.

The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.

Some who are far from atheists, may make themselves merry with that conceit of thousands of spirits dancing at once upon a needle's point.

Truth is the most unbending and uncompliable, the most necessary, firm, immutable, and adamantine thing in the world.

Truth and love are two of the most powerful things in the world; and when they both go together they cannot easily be withstood.