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Auteurs | Rubriques |
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Fragments
(10) Nature loves to hide.
(11) The lord whose is the oracle
at Delphi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.
(13) The things that can be seen,
heard, and learned are what I prize the most.
(20) This world, which is the same
for all, no one of gods or humans has made; but it was ever, is now, and
ever will be an ever-living
Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.
(21) The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind.
(22) all things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares.
(23) It becomes liquid sea, and is measured by the same tale as before it became earth.
(24) Fire is want and excess.
(25) Fire lives the death of air,
and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of earth, earth
that of water.
(27) How can one hide from that which never sets?
(29) The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the handmaids of justice, will find him out.
(31) If there were no sun it would be night, for all the other stars could do.
(33) Thales
foretold an eclipse.
(37) If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.
(38) Souls smell in Hades.
(40) It scatters and it gathers;
it advances and retires. (41, 42) You cannot step twice into the same rivers;
for fresh waters are ever
flowing in upon you.
(43) Homer was wrong in saying:
"Would that strife might perish from among gods and humans!" He did not
see that he was praying
for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard,
all things would pass away. . . .
(45) People do not know how what
is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions,
like that of the bow and
the lyre.
(50) The straight and the crooked
path of the fuller's comb is one and the same.
(69) The way up and the way down
is one and the same.
(77) People set a light for themselves
in the night-time, when they have died but are alive. The sleeper, whose
vision has been put out,
lights up from the dead; he that is awake lights up from the sleeping.
(79) Time is a child playing checkers,
the kingly power is a child's.
(81) We step and do not step into
the same rivers; we are and are not.
(119) Homer should be turned out
of the lists and whipped, and Archilochus likewise.
(129, 130) They vainly purify themselves
by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into
the mud were to wash
his feet in mud. Any person who marked him doing thus, would deem him
mad.
