Giordano Bruno Substance Quotations

God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.

When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death. For nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.

Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo , nor reducible ad nihilum , but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die .