Heraclitus

Olympia, Greece - 2007

1. “All is flux, nothing stays still.”
2. “All things are filled with souls and spirits.”
3. “All things are composed of fire and are again resolved into fire.”
4. “All things come into being by the conflict of opposites.”
5. “And it is the same thine 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.”
6. “Beginning and end are common.”
7. "Bigotry is the sacred disease."
8. "Change alone is unchanging."
9. “Character is destiny.”
10. “Combinations, wholes and not-wholes, conjunction and separation, harmony and discord - out of all things comes One, and out of One all things.”
11. “Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.”
12. “Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordent. From all things one and from one all things.”
13. “Eternity is a child at play, playing draughts.”
14. “Even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe.”
15. “Everything flows and nothing abides;. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed..”
16. “Fire lives in the death of earth, air in the death of fire, water in the death of air, and earth in the death of water.”
17. “For those who are awake the cosmos is one.”
18. “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.”
19. “Greater dooms win greater destinies.”
20. "If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail."
21. “I have searched myself.”
22. “Immortals become mortals, mortals become immortals; they live in each other's death and die in each other's life.”
23. “Into the same rivers we step and do not step.”
24. “It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.”
25. “It is in changing that things find repose.”
26. “It is wise to agree that all things are one.”
27. “It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.”
28. “It rests in change.”
29. “It throws apart and then brings together again; it advances and retires.”
30. "It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.
31. “Knowledge of divine things is lost to us by incredulity.”
32. “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.”
33. “Much learning does not teach understanding.”
34. “Nature loves to hide itself.”
35. “No-one can step twice into the same river, nor touch mortal substance twice in the same condition. By the speed of its change, it scatters and gathers again.”
36. "Nothing endures but change."
37. "Nothing is, everything is becoming."
38. “Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”
39. “Other men fail to notice what they do when they are awake, just as they forget what they do when asleep.”
40. “Sea water is at once very pure and very foul: it is drinkable and healthful for fishes, but undrinkable and deadly for men.”
41. “The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.”
42. “The handsomest ape is ugly compared with humankind; the wisest man appears as an ape when compared with a god --- in wisdom, in beauty, and in all other ways.”
43. "The lightning-flash steers all things."
44. “The most perfect mind is a dry light.”
45. “The phases of fire are craving and satiety."
46. “There is a stability in the Universe because of the orderly and balanced process of change, the same measure coming out as going in, as if reality were a huge fire that inhaled and exhaled equal amounts.”
47. “There is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things, as there is of wares for gold and of gold for wares.”
48. “There is no permanent reality except the reality of change; permanence is an illusion of the senses.”
49. “There is nothing permanent except change.”
50. "The soul is its own source of unfolding."
51. “The structure of the universe was arranged by one harmony through the blending of opposite principles.”
52. “The stupid are deaf to the truth; they hear, but think that the wisdom applies to someone else.”
53. “The sun is new each day.”
54. “The things that exist are brought into harmony by the clash of opposing currents.”
55. ”The thunderbolt pilots all things.”
56. “The transformations of fire -- first, sea; and of sea, half becomes earth and half the lightning-flash.”
57. ”The waking have one world. in common, whereas each sleeper turns away to a private world of his own.”
58. “The way up and the way down are one and the same.”
59. “They do not understand how, being separated, it is united with itself. There is a backward-stretching tension, as between the bow and the lyre.”
60. “This cosmos, the same for all, was not made by gods or men, but always was and is and ever shall be ever-living fire, igniting in measures and extinguishing in measures.”
61. “Those who are awake all live in the same world. Those who are asleep live in their own worlds.”
62. “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 truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.”
63. ”Time is a child moving counters in a game; the royal power is a child's.”
64. "To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do."
65. “We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.”
66. “Whatever we see when awake is death; when asleep, dreams.”
67. “Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.”
68. “You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing onto you.”