50 Giordano Bruno Quotes About The Universe

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Published July 9, 2023

Get in touch with the cosmos with our Giordano Bruno quotes.

Bruno made observations about the stars aligned with what we know about space.

Check out our Giordano Bruno quotes below to learn more.

Who was Giordano Bruno?

Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, cosmological theorist, occultist, and poet.

He lived an exciting life from 1548 to 1600.

Check out these Giordano Bruno facts below:

Bruno extended the Copernican model of the universe.
Bruno was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition.
He proposed that stars were suns and that life existed on other planets.

Giordano and the cosmos

You can’t help but wonder and consider the mysteries of the universe when you look up at the stars.

Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked to the stars and wondered.

Men like Giordano Bruno looked to the stars and sought answers.

Nicolaus Copernicus came out with the heliocentric model of the universe in 1543, five years before Bruno’s birth.

This model positions the sun as the center of the universe, orbited by the other planets, including our Earth.

His thirst for knowledge led him to question aspects of reality that Church figures did not like.

How was Giordano Bruno killed?

Men of passion are not easy to silence.

Bruno was passionate about understanding the world around us.

He sought a deeper connection with the cosmos and studied with various groups and institutions.

The Catholic Church demanded that Bruno accept their core doctrines, but Bruno refused.

He objected to the Trinity, the idea of Hell, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary.

The Church was known for harsh responses to anyone questioning its authority or worldview.

Giordano Bruno was convicted of heresy and brutally burnt at the stake by Catholic Church authorities.

Despite his death, Bruno’s ideas were not silenced and remain relevant to many today.

To learn more, check out our Giordano Bruno quotes below.

Short Giordano Bruno quotes about the nature of realty

These quotes demonstrate how intensely Bruno wondered about the mysteries of life.

1. “I need not instruct you of my belief.” — Giordano Bruno, The Chandler

2. “God is infinite, so His universe must be too.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

3. “Believe that nothing is impossible for you.” — Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1999

4. “And what am I not deprived of this sense too?” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

5. “I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

6. “Why does death not come to my aid, now that I am deprived of life?” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

7. “For what purpose are my natural faculties deprived of their power?” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

8. “Time gives all and takes all away; everything changes, but nothing perishes.” — Giordano Bruno, The Chandler

9. “Mount higher than the highest height; descend lower than the lowest depth.” — Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1999

10. “One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself.” — Giordano Bruno, The Chandler

The best Giordano Bruno quotes about God and the cosmos

Check out these deep quotes from Giordano Bruno.

11. “Think yourself immortal and capable of understanding all, all arts, all sciences, the nature of every living being.” — Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1999

12. “Unless you make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God: for the like is not intelligible save to the like.” — Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1999

13. “Behold in the candle borne by this Chandler, to whom I give birth, that which shall clarify certain shadows of ideas.” — Giordano Bruno, The Chandler

14. “The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the universe. Naught is mixed, yet is there some presence.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

15. “If you embrace in your thought all things at once, times, places, substances, qualities, quantities, you may understand God.” — Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1999

Additional Giordano Bruno quotes about God and the cosmos

Bruno had controversial beliefs, some of which you can see below.

16. “In exercising its faculty, then, the mind can desire an object only to the extent that it is near, proximate, known and familiar to it.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

17. “Anything we take in the universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

18. “With this philosophy, my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, however, obscure the night may be, I await the daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for night.” — Giordano Bruno, The Chandler

19. “Make yourself grow to a greatness beyond measure, by a bound free yourself from the body; raise yourself above all time, become Eternity; then you will understand God.” — Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno, and the Hermetic Tradition, 1999

20. “We delight in one knowable thing, which comprehends all that is knowable; in one apprehensible, which draws together all that can be apprehended; in a single being that includes all, above all in the one which is itself the all.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

Famous Giordano Bruno quotes about space, infinity, and the opinion of others

Who better to ponder the universe with than Giordano Bruno?

21. “In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

22. “Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.” — Giordano Bruno, Life, and Teachings of Giordano Bruno, 1913

23. “Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

24. “Because the soul always desires to love more than it loves and to see more than it sees.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

25. “Moreover, the soul desires that this species which the sight has engendered in it should not become attenuated, enfeebled, or lost.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

More Giordano Bruno quotes about space, infinity, and the opinion of others

Here are some more words from Bruno sharing his thoughts and opinions.

26. “It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority.” — Giordano Bruno, Life, and Teachings of Giordano Bruno, 1913

27. “Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

28. “There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

29. “The beginning, middle, and end of the birth, growth, and perfection of whatever we behold is from contraries, by contraries, and to contraries.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

30. “They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion.” Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

Giordano Bruno quotes and sayings about the heart, soul, and life

These quotes demonstrate how Bruno was a master wordsmith.

31. “Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

32. “The more the heart is estranged from the soul, the more does it enkindle itself toward the infinite.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

33. “Here am I miserable, deprived of a heart, abandoned by my thoughts, bereft of the hope I had entirely placed in them.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

34. “Leave me then, it cries, corporeal life, and do not trouble me, so that I may reascend to my native home, to my sun.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

35. “He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

Additional quotes from Giordano Bruno about the heart, soul, and life

Here are more quotes expressing Bruno’s thoughts and beliefs.

36. “And while I rise from my own globe to others and penetrate ever further through the eternal field, that which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

37. “Here the sorrowing soul, not in real discontent, but in the passion of a certain amorous martyrdom, speaks as though addressing its discourse to those who are similarly impassioned.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

38. “It has dismissed its heart, as it were, against its will, for the heart directs its course toward an impossible goal, extends itself where it cannot reach and would embrace what it cannot grasp.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

39. “In this manner, although the soul at first launches complaints against its heart and thoughts, it now desires to be raised with them and manifestly deplores the union and familiarity contracted with corporeal matter.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

40. “It is manifest that every soul and spirit hath a certain continuity with the spirit of the universe so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity.— Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

The top Giordano Bruno quotes about pigs, fate, and death

In these quotes, Bruno muses about what comes after the physical life.

41. “Thus a pig cannot wish to be a man nor desire anything appropriate to the appetite of a man.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

42. “Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Monad, Number, and Figure, 1591

43. “Whatever contrarity is, there is action and reaction, there is motion, diversity, multitude, and order, there are degrees, succession, and vicissitude.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

44. “However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Monad, Number, and Figure, 1591

45. “Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Monad, Number, and Figure, 1591

More quotes from Giordano Bruno

Here are a few additional thoughts and opinions of Bruno.

46. “This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature, from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts.” — Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, 1584

47. [The pig] prefers to wallow in the mud rather than in a bed of fine linen; he would sooner mate with a sow than with the most beautiful woman nature produces, because the desire conforms to the nature of the species.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585

48. “Draw into yourself all sensations of everything created, fire and water, dry and moist, imagining that you are everywhere, on earth, in the sea, in the sky, that you are not yet born, in the maternal womb, adolescent, old, dead, beyond death.” — Giordano Bruno, Giordano Bruno, and the Hermetic Tradition, 1999

49. “There is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call void: in it are unnumerable globes like this on which we live and grow, this space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, sense-perception nor nature assigns to it a limit.” — Giordano Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584

50. “This is a beauty which comes and goes, is born and dies, blooms and decays; and is eternally beautiful for so very short a moment and within itself truly and lastingly contains a cargo, a store-house, an emporium, a market of all the filth, toxins and poisons which our step-mother nature is able to produce.” — Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies, 1585