Though this discourse 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, although, all things happen in accordance with the account I give men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and works such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and explaining how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when you wake them up, just as they forget, what they do when asleep.
Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.
The sun is the width of a man's foot.
Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat.
They purify themselves by defiling-themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to go and wash his feet in mud.
The sun is new every day.
If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.
It is the opposite which is good for us.
Asses would rather have straw than gold.
Couples are things whole and not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.
Every beast is tended with blows.
You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are flowing in upon you.
Pigs delight in the mire more than in clean water.
Night-walkers, Magians, priests of Bakchos and priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers.
For if it were not to Dionysos that they made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysos in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine vat.
How can one hide from that which never sinks to rest?
The many have not as many thoughts as the things they meet with; nor, if they do remark them, do they understand them, though they believe they do.
If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.
Knowing not how to listen nor how to speak.
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, dooms in turn.
All the things we see when awake are death, even as the things we see in slumber are sleep.
Those who seek for gold dig up much earth and find a little.
Men would not have known the name of justice if these things were not.
Gods and men honour those who are slain in battle.
Greater deaths win greater portions.
Man is kindled and put out like a light in the nighttime.
There awaits men when they die such things as they look not for nor dream of.
. . . bringing untrustworthy witnesses in support of disputed points.
For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts.
This order, which is the same in all: things no'one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now and ever, shall be an everliving. Fire, fixed measures of it kindling and fixed measures going out.
The transformations of Fire are first of all sea and half of the sea is earth half fiery stormcloud.
Wisdom is one only. It is willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus.
And it is the law, too, that we obey the counsel of one.
Fools when they do hear are like the deaf; of them, does the proverb bear witness that they are absent, when, present.
Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.
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.
Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.
In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the rest. (He said, “Most men are bad.”).
The learning of many things teacheth not understanding; else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hekataios.
Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.
Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, and Archilochos likewise.
Wantonness needs to be extinguished even more than a conflagration.
The people must fight for its law as for its walls.
You will not find the boundaries of soul by travelling in any direction.
Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.
The bow is called life (βίος), but its work is death.
One is as ten thousand to me, if he be the best.
We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.
It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.
Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre.
Time is a child playing draughts; the kingly power is a child's.
War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.
The hidden harmony is better than the open.
Am I to prize these things above what can be seen, heard, and learned?
Hesiod is most men's teacher. Men think he knew very many things, a man who did not know day or night! They are one.
Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, then complain that they do not get any adequate recompense for it.
The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb is one and the same.
The way up and the way down is one and the same.
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.
Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the other's death and dying the other's life.
. . . that they rise up and become the guardians of the hosts as of the quick and dead.
The thunderbolt steers all things.
Fire is want and surfeit.
Fire will come upon and lay hold of all things.
God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with different incenses, is named according to the savour of each.
They are estranged from that with which they have most constant intercourse.
It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep.
Those who are asleep are fellow-workers...
Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water.
It is pleasure to souls to become moist.
The way of man has no wisdom, but that of the gods has.
Man is called a baby by god, even as a child by a man.
We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.
The most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.
The wisest man is an ape compared to god, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.
It is hard to fight with desires. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.
... (The wise man) is not known because of men's want of belief.
The fool is fluttered at every word.
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.
The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.
All things are exchanged for Fire, and Fire for all things as wares are exchanged for gold, and gold for wares.
You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.
And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things solemn, unadorned, and unembellished, reaches over a thousand years with her voice because of the god in her.
The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.
The sun will not exceed his measures does the Erinyes, the avenging handmaids of Justice will find him out
It is best to hide folly.
Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.
Dogs bark at every one they do not know.
Souls smell in Hades.
If there were no sun, it would be night.
...the seasons that bring all things.
I dived into myself ... (...) ... The eyes are more exact witness than ears.
To a god all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.
The beginning and the end are common (to both paths).
For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad and few good.
One day is equal to another.
Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men, if they have souls that understand not their language.
Of all whose discourses I have heard there is not one who attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from other things.
It is no good for men to get all they wish to get.
It is sickness that makes health pleasant; evil, good; hunger, plenty; weariness, rest.
Thought is common to all.
Men themselves have made a law for themselves, not knowing what they made it about but the gods have ordered the nature of all things. Now the arrangements which men have made are never constant, neither when they are right they are wrong; but all the arrangements which the gods have made are always right, both when they are right nor when they are wrong; so great is the difference.
A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist.
The dry soul is the wised and best.
Man's character is his fate.
The limit of East and West is the Bear; and opposite the Bear is the boundary of bright Zeus.
The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless youths; for they have cast out Hermodoros, 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. »
Nature loves to hide.
Even the posset separates if it is not stirred.
It is cold things that become warm, and what is warm that cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened.
Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and choosing out these writings, claimed for his own wisdom what was but a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief.
