This whole which is visible in different ways in bodies, as far as formation, constitution, appearance, colors and other properties and common qualities, is none other than the diverse face of the same substance - a changeable, mobile face, subject to decay, of an immobile, permanent and eternal being.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The visible world shows many forms but these are just changing faces of one eternal substance.
- In plain terms
- Everything you see changes but they all share the same permanent underlying substance.
- What can you take from it?
- See the permanent reality behind the changing appearances of the world.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What is the difference between how things look and what they are?
- Is the permanent real or the changing?
Another view
Practical life often requires treating appearances as real regardless of underlying substance.
More from Giordano Bruno
The Universe is one, infinite, immobile. The absolute potential is one, the act is one, the form or soul is one, the material or body is one, the thing is one,…
Permalink to quote #10 Everything that makes diversity of kinds, of species, differences, properties: everything that consists in generation, decay, alteration and change is not an e…
Permalink to quote #12 We find that everything that makes up difference and number is pure accident, pure show, pure constitution. Every production, of whatever kind, is an alteratio…
Permalink to quote #9
Related quotes
Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and 'fashi…
Giordano BrunoGiordano Bruno quote #30 I say, life and figure are distinct attributes of one substance, and as one and the same body may be transmuted into all kinds of figures; and as the perfecter…
Anne ConwayAnne Conway quote #1 Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Arthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer quote #7