Fragments of Heraclites

(a). Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

1. Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it […]

6. The sun is new each day.

16. How can anyone hide from that which never sets?

17. Most people do not take heed of the things they encounter, nor do they grasp them even when they have learned about them, although they think they do.

21. Whatever we see when awake is death; when asleep, dreams.

22. Seekers after gold dig up much earth and find little.

34. Fools, although they hear, are like the deaf: to them the adage applies that when present they are absent.

45. You could not discover the limits of soul, even if you traveled by every path in order to do so; such is the depth of its meaning.

47. Let us not make arbitrary conjectures about the greatest matters.

49a. Into the same rivers we step and do not step.

59. For the wool-carders the straight and the winding way are one and the same.

60. The way up and the way down are one and the same.

62. Immortals become mortals, mortals become immortals; they live in each other’s death and die in each other’s life.

72. Although intimately connected with the Logos, men keep setting themselves against it.

75. Even sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the universe.

84a. It is in changing that things find repose.

88. It is one and the same thing to be living and dead, awake or asleep, young or old. The former aspect in each case becomes the latter, and the latter becomes the former, by sudden unexpected reversal.

91. It throws apart and then brings together again; it advances and retires.

– Heraclites