HeraclitusFragments

... the cycles: of these the sun is commander
and overseer, for determining the changes and the seasons which carry all
things.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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I searched myself.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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To God all things are fair and good and just, but men hold some things wrong and some right.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Concerning the circumference of a circle the beginning and end are common.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that "the many are bad and few good."

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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[Heraclitus] said that Homer was an atronomer.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Heraclitus attacked Hesiod for making
some
days good and other days bad, because he did not recognize that
the nature of every day is one.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men who
have barbarian souls.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains
to recognizing what is wise, set apart from all. 
– or – 
Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains
to recognizing that the wise is set apart from all.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Conjunctions: wholes and non wholes,
convergent divergent,
consonant dissonant,
from everything the One and from the One everything.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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It is not better for men to get all they wish to get.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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It is sickness that makes health pleasant and good; hunger, plenty; weariness, rest.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Thinking well is the greatest excellence;
and wisdom is to act and speak what is true, perceiving things according
to their nature.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Thought is common to all.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Those who speak with understanding must hold
fast to what is common to all as a city holds fast to its law, and even
more strongly. For all human laws are fed by the divine one. It
prevails as much as it will, and suffices for all things with something
to spare.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The logos of the soul is increasing itself.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Recognizing oneself and being of a sound
mind are for all men.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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A dry gleam of light is the wisest and best soul.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Heraclitus said that a man's character
is his fate.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Every beast is driven to pasture with a blow.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The limits of dawn and evening are the Bear
and, opposite the Bear, the guardian of bright Zeus.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodorus, the best man among them, saying, "We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others."

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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... stepping near ...

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Nature loves to hide.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The most beautiful universe is (a) pouring
out (of) sweepings at random.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Even the barley-drink separates if it is not stirred.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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(To the Egyptians): "If they are gods, why do you lament them?
If you lament them, you must no longer regard them as gods."


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, pursued inquiry
further than all other men and,
choosing what he liked from these compositions,
claimed for himself a wisdom of his own:
much learning, a bad craft.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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On those who enter the same rivers, ever
different waters flow.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Pigs delight in the mire more than
in clean water.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The mysteries practiced among men are unholy
mysteries

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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For if it were not to Dionysus that they
made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting
most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysus in whose honor they
go mad and rave.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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How can one hide from that which never sets?

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The many do not take heed of such things
as those they meet with, nor do they recognize them when they are
taught, though they think they do

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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If you do not expect the unexpected, you
will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Knowing not how to listen, they do not
[know] how to speak

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Though this Word is true evermore, yet men
are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as
before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in
accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them,
when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each
thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But
other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget
what they do in sleep.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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When they are born, they wish to live and
to meet with their dooms – or rather to rest – and they leave children
behind them to meet with their dooms in turn.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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All the things we see when awake are death,
even as all we see in slumber are sleep.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Those who seek for gold dig up much earth
and find a little.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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They would not have known the name
of justice if these things were not.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Gods and men honor those who are slain by
Ares.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Greater deaths win greater portions.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Man kindles a light for himself in the night-time,
when he has died but is alive. The sleeper, whose
vision has been put out, lights up from the dead;
he that is awake lights up from the sleeping.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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There awaits men when they die such things as they look not for nor dream of.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The most esteemed of them knows – holds fast to – fancies. 
Justice shall overtake the artificers of lies and the false witnesses.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Though the logos is common, the many
live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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This world, which is the same for all,
no one of gods or men has made. But it always was, is, and will
be: an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going
out.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The transformations of Fire: first, sea;
and of the sea half is earth, half whirlwind ...Sea pours out, and is measured by the same
amount as before it became earth.

The sea is poured out and measured to the same
proportion as existed before it became earth.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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It is law, also, to obey the will of one.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Hearing they do not understand, like
the deaf.  Of them does the saying bear witness: 'present, they
are absent.'

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Because men in search of wisdom must be
aware of very many things.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth. But water comes from earth; and from water, soul.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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[Thales], according to some, seems to have
been the first student of astronomy ... a fact that both Heraclitus and
Democritus bear witness to.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the rest.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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[Concerning the size of the sun: it is]
the width of a human foot

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The learning of many things does not teach
understanding; otherwise, it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras,
and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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One,the wisdom. Understand what steers all things by means of all things.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Homer deserves to be taken out of the
games and beaten with a stick, and Archilochus too.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Wantonness needs putting out, even more than a house on fire.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The people must fight for its law as for its walls.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Traveling on every path,
you will not find the boundaries of soul by going – so deep is
its word (logos).


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Heraclitus said that thinking is a sacred
disease and that sight is deceptive.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Let us not conjecture randomly about
the most important things.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Bow: the bow's name is life, though its
work is death.(biós, Homeric word for bow –
bíos, life)

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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One is ten thousand to me, if he be the best.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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If happiness consisted in the pleasures of
the body, we should call oxen happy whenever they come across bitter vetch
to eat.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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They can't comprehend how the different assembles; harmony of inverse tensions, such as that of the bow and the lyre.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The path of writing is crooked and straight.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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They cleanse themselves by smearing themselves with a new blood, as if,
having walked on mud, one would wash oneself with mud: we would take them
fora fool on seeing them. They prey to statues, as one would talk to a wall.
They ignore completely what gods and heroes are.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The way up and the way down is one and the same.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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...that they rise up and become the wakeful guardians of the living and the dead.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The thunderbolt that steers all things.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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[Heraclitus calls it (i.e., fire)] want and surfeit.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Fire in its advance will judge and convict all things.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savor of each.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The sun... as Heraclitus says, is
new every day.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Human opinions are children's toys.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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(One must remember also) the man who forgets which way the road leads.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Most are at odds with that with which they
most constantly associate – the account which governs the universe –
and... what they meet with every day seems foreign to them.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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We must not act and speak like sleepers;
because then we also believe we act and speak.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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We should not act and speak like 'children
of our parents': i.e., in the way that has been handed down to us.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Those who are asleep are fellow-workers in what goes on in the world.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The death of fire is the birth of air,
and the death of air is the birth of water.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The way of man has no wisdom, but that of God has.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Man is called a baby by God, even as a child [is called a baby] by a man.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils
would distinguish them.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being through strife necessarily.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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[... in the words of Heraclitus,] "the
prince of lies."

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The most handsome of apes is ugly in comparison
with a human.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The wisest of men, in contrast to God,
appears as an ape in wisdom and beauty and all things.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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It rests by changing.

It is a weariness to labor for the same masters and be ruled by them.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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[But the greater part of things divine, according
to Heraclitus,] escape recognition due to lack of confidence.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The fool is fluttered at every word.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The waking have one common world, but the
sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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What opposes unites, and the finest attunement
stems from things bearing in opposite directions, and all things come about
by strife.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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All things are an interchange for
Fire, and Fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold
for goods.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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It is not possible to enter twice in the same river,
nor touch twice a perishable substance in the same state;
because by its organicity and swiftness to change,
it spreads and again comes together,
or yet, it is not again or after,
but simultaneously that it assembles and disassembles,
that it comes and goes away;
and by this, its becoming doesn’t turn into a being.


~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The lord whose is the oracle at Delphi neither
speaks nor hides his meaning, but gives a sign.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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The sun will not overstep his measures; if
he does, the Erinyes, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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It is best to hide folly.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Dogs bark at every one they do not recognize.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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Souls smell in Hades.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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If there were no sun, on account of the
other stars it would be night.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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For a horse, a dog and a human being have
different pleasures; asses prefer straw to gold, since asses find
food sweeter than gold.

~ Heraclitus, Fragments
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