Quotations

When... Heraclitus names the world an ever-living fire that... extinguishes itself and again kindles itself, when... all is exchanged for fire and fire for all... he can only understand by this that fire, this restless, all-consuming, all-transmuting, and equally (in heat) all-vivifying element, represents the constant force of this eternal alteration and transformation, the notion of life, in the most vivid and energetic manner. ...the means of which the power of motion that is precedent to all matter avails itself for the production of the living process of things. Heraclitus... explains the multiplicity of things... [fire] condenses itself into material elements, first air, then water, then earth. ...These two processes of extinction and ignition... alternate... in perpetual rotation with each other and... in stated periods the world resolves itself into the primal fire, in order to re-create itself out of it again. ...[F]ire is to him... the principle of movement, of physical as of spiritual vitality; the soul itself is a fiery vapour; its power and perfection depend on its being pure from all grosser and duller elements.

Albert Schwegler

Handbook of the History of Philosophy (1868)

Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas.

Henry T. Buckle

You can pass your life in an equable flow of happiness if you can follow the right way and think and act in the right way.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations V.34

In the same way, when some people have seen a philosopher and have heard someone speaking like Euphrates […] , they wish to be philosophers themselves. Man, consider first the nature of the business, and then learn your own natural ability, if you are able to bear it.

Do you wish to be a contender in the pentathlon, or a wrestler?

Look to your arms, your thighs, see what your loins are like. For one man has a natural talent for one thing, another for another.Do you suppose that you can eat in the same fashion, drink in the same fashion, give way to impulse and to irritation, just as you do now?You must keep vigils, work hard, abandon your own people, be despised by a paltry slave, be laughed to scorn by those who meet you, in everything get the worst of it, in honor, in office, in court, in every paltry affair. Look these drawbacks over carefully, if you are willing at the price of these things to secure tranquility, freedom and calm.Otherwise, do not approach philosophy; don't act like a child—now a philosopher, later on a tax-gatherer, then a rhetorician, then a procurator of Caesar. These things do not go together. You must be one person, either good or bad; you must labor to improve either your own governing principle or externals; you must work hard either on the inner man, or on things outside; that is, play either the role of a philosopher or else that of a layman.

Epictetus

Epictetus, Enchiridion (Handbook), 29.

If neither sub-atomic particles nor organic species exemplify the "permanent entities" of Greek metaphysics, what else in the real world does so? ...Two hundred years of historical research have had their effect. Whether we turn to social or intellectual history, evolutionary zoology, historical geology or astronomy—whether we consider explanatory theories or star-clusters, societies or cultures, languages or disciplines, organic species or the Earth itself—the verdict is not Parmenidean but Heraclitean. As we now understand it, nothing in the empirical world possesses the permanent unchanging identity which all Greek natural philosophers (the Epicureans apart) presupposed in the ultimate elements of Nature. So, if we... are to entertain metaphysical thoughts about the nature of things-in-general consistent with the rest of our late-twentieth-century ideas, we must explore the consequences of the modern, post-Darwinian or "populational" approach, as applied not just to species, but to historical entities of all kinds. Confronted with the question, "How do permanent entities preserve their identity through all their apparent changes?", we must simply deny the validity of the question itself. In its place, we must substitute the question, "How do historical entities maintain their coherence and continuity, despite all the real changes they undergo?"

Stephen Toulmin

Human Understanding (1972), Vol. 1

Consider that before long you will be nobody and nowhere, nor will any of the things exist that you now see, nor any of those who are now living. For all things are formed by nature to change and be turned and to perish in order that other things in continuous succession may exist.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations 12.21

The work of philosophy is simple and modest. Do not draw me aside into pomposity.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations IX.29

The best exponent of anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno (342–267 or 270 B.C.), from Kition, the founder of the Stoic philosophy, who distinctly opposed his conception of a free community without government to the state-Utopia of Plato. He repudiated the omnipotence of the State, its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual — remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by providing man with another instinct — that of sociability. When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the Cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money — free gifts taking the place of the exchanges.

Peter Kropotkin

"Anarchism", Encyclopedia Britannica (1910), quoted in Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings (1927)

Whether the universe is a concourse of atoms, or nature is a system, let this first be established: that I am a part of the whole that is governed by nature; next, that I stand in some intimate connection with other kindred parts.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations X.6

Remember that the promise of desire is the attainment of what you desire, that of aversion is not to fall into what is avoided, and that he who fails in his desire is unfortunate, while he who falls into what he would avoid experiences misfortune.If, then, you avoid only what is unnatural among those things which are under your control, you will fall into of the things which you avoid; but if you try to avoid disease, or death, or poverty, you will experience misfortune.Withdraw, therefore,your aversion from all the matters that are not under our control and transfer it to what is unnatural among those which are under our control. But for the time being remove utterly your desire;for if you desire some one of the things that are not under our control you are bound to be unfortunate; and, at the same time, not one of the things that are under our control, which it would be excellent for you to desire, is within your grasp. But employ only choice and refusal, and these too but lightly, and with reservations, and without straining.

Epictetus

Epictetus, The Enchiridion (Handbook), 2.

Living virtuously is equal to living in accordance with one's experience of the actual course of nature.

Chrysippus

as quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 182

Travaille volontairement et avec diligence, sans distraction et en étant conscient de l’intérêt commun. … Sois également joyeux, et ne cherche pas d’aide extérieure ni la tranquillité que procurent les autres. Un homme doit alors se tenir debout par lui-même, et non être soutenu par les autres.

Marcus Aurelius

Pensées 3.5

In... Heraclitus... Becoming occupies the foremost place. He regarded that which moves, the fire, as the basic element. The difficulty, to reconcile the... one fundamental principle with the infinite variety of phenomena, is solved... by recognizing... strife of... opposites is... a kind of harmony. ...[T]he world is ...one and many ..."the opposite tension" of ...opposites ...constitutes the unity of the One. He says: "...war is common to all and strife is justice ...all things come into being and pass away through strife." ...[T]hat infinite and eternal undifferentiated Being ...cannot ...explain the infinite variety of things. This leads to the antithesis of Being and Becoming and ...to the solution of Heraclitus ...change ...is the fundamental principle; the "imperishable change, that renovates the world," as the poets have called it. But ...change ...is not a material cause and therefore is represented ...by the fire ...both matter and a moving force. ...[P]hysics is ...extremely near to ...Heraclitus ...[i]f we replace ..."fire" by ..."energy" ...Energy is a substance, since its total ...does not change, and ...elementary particles can ...be made from this ...Energy may be called the fundamental cause for all change in the world. ...Energy is ...that which moves; it may be called the primary cause of all change, and ...can be transformed into matter or heat or light. The strife between opposites in the philosophy of Heraclitus can be found in the strife between two different forms of energy.

Werner Heisenberg

Physics and Philosophy (1958)

If it will be any consolation to you in your bereavement to know that it is the common lot of all, be assured that nothing will continue to stand in the place in which it now stands,

but that time will lay everything low
and bear it away with itself:

it will sport, not only with men—for how small a part are they of the dominion of Fortune?—but with districts, provinces, quarters of the world: it will efface entire mountains, and in other places will pile new rocks on high: it will dry up seas, change the course of rivers, destroy the intercourse of nation with nation, and break up the communion and fellowship of the human race: in other regions it will swallow up cities by opening vast chasms in the earth, will shake them with earthquakes, will breathe forth pestilence from the nether world, cover all habitable ground with inundations and destroy every creature in the flooded world, or burn up all mortals by a huge conflagration. *

When the time shall arrive for the world to be brought to an end, that it may begin its life anew, all the forces of nature will perish in conflict with one another, the stars will be dashed together, and all the lights which now gleam in regular order in various parts of the sky will then blaze in one fire with all their fuel burning at once. Then we also, the souls of the blest and the heirs of eternal life, whenever God thinks fit to reconstruct the universe, when all things are settling down again, we also, being a small accessory to the universal wreck, shall be changed into our old elements. Happy is your son, Marcia, in that he already knows this.

Seneca

Of Consolation: To Marcia, 26

Make it, therefore, your study at the very outset to say to every harsh external impression,

"You are an external impression and not at all what you appear to be."

After that examine it and test it by these rules which you have, the first and most important of which is this: Whether the impression has to do with the things which are under our control, or with those which are not under our control; and, if it has to do with some one of the things not under our control, have ready to hand the answer, "It is nothing to me.

Epictetus

Enchiridion, Manual, Chapter 1

He says: "Contented poverty is an honourable estate." Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour's property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come?

Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth?

It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.

Seneca

Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius, letter 2 – On discursiveness in reading.

He often acts unjustly who does not do a certain thing; not only he who does a certain thing.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations IX.5

I see in myself, Lucilius, not just an improvement, but a transformation.

Seneca

Seneca, Moral letters to Lucilius, 6.

Besides, he who is feared, fears also; no one has been able to arouse terror and live in peace of mind.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter CV: On Facing the World With Confidence

A setback has often cleared the way for greater prosperity. Many things have fallen only to rise to more exalted heights.

Seneca

Letters to Lucilius, 91

We put down mad dogs; we kill the wild, untamed ox; we use the knife on sick sheep to stop their infecting the flock; we destroy abnormal offspring at birth; children, too, if they are born weak or deformed, we drown. Yet this is not the work of anger, but of reason – to separate the sound from the worthless.

Seneca

Moral and Political Essays

Toward good men God has the mind of a father, he cherishes for them a manly love, and he says, "Let them be harassed by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength." Bodies grown fat through sloth are weak, and not only labour, but even movement and their very weight cause them to break down. Unimpaired prosperity cannot withstand a single blow; but he who has struggled constantly with his ills becomes hardened through suffering; and yields to no misfortune; nay, even if he falls, he still fights upon his knees.

Seneca

De Providentia (On Providence), 2.6

A limit of time is fixed for you, which if you do not use for clearing away the clouds from your mind, it will go and you will go, and it will never return.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations II.4

You have, dearest Serene, things that can protect tranquility, things that restore it, things that resist creeping escapes. Be it known, however, that none of these things is sufficient for those who hold a feeble matter, unless a constant concern surrounds the slipping mind.

Seneca

Dialogi de Tranquillitate Animi

No man ought to glory except in that which is his own.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XLI: On the god within us

Remember, however, before all else, to strip things of all that disturbs and confuses, and to see what each is at bottom; you will then comprehend that they contain nothing fearful except the actual fear.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XXIV: On despising death

You will thus understand that what you fear is either insignificant or short-lived.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XXIV: On despising death

The archer must know what he is seeking to hit; then he must aim and control the weapon by his skill. Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Chance must necessarily have great influence over our lives, because we live by chance. It is the case with certain men, however, that they do not know that they know certain things. Just as we often go searching for those who stand beside us, so we are apt to forget that the goal of the Supreme Good lies near us.

Seneca

Epistles, Volume II

Learn to be content with little, and cry out with courage and with greatness of soul: ‘We have water, we have porridge; let us compete in happiness with Jupiter himself.’

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter CX: On True and False Riches

Drunkenness inflames and lays bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a chuck on impulses to wrong behaviour.

Seneca

Letters to Lucilius, 83

I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XLVII: On master and slave

He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.

Seneca

De Ira (On Anger); Book III, Chapter V

For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 1 – On Saving Time

I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter LXI: On meeting death cheerfully

And so make it your primary endeavour not to be carried away by the impression; for if once you gain time and delay, you will more easily become master of yourself.

Epictetus

Enchiridion, 20

Imagine that nature is saying to us: “Those things of which you complain are the same for all. I cannot give anything easier to any man, but whoever wishes will make things easier for himself.” In what way? By equanimity. You must suffer pain, and thirst, and hunger, and old age too, if a longer stay among men shall be granted you; you must be sick, and you must suffer loss and death.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XCI: On the Lesson to be Drawn From the Burning of Lyons

You do not know where death awaits you; so be ready for it everywhere.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XXVI: On Old Age and Death

What anger is has been sufficiently explained. The difference between it and irascibility is evident: it is the same as that between a drunken man and a drunkard; between a frightened man and a coward. It is possible for an angry man not to be irascible; an irascible man may sometimes not be angry. I shall omit the other varieties of anger, which the Greeks distinguish by various names, because we have no distinctive words for them in our language, although we call men bitter and harsh, and also peevish, frantic, clamorous, surly and fierce: all of which are different forms of irascibility.

Seneca

On Anger to Novatus

When we leave you and assemble together by ourselves, we talk freely about his sayings and doings, treating them with the respect which they deserve: in your presence deep silence is observed about him, and thus you lose that greatest of pleasures, the hearing the praises of your son, which I doubt not you would be willing to hand down to all future ages, had you the means of so doing, even at the cost of your own life.

Seneca

To Marcia on Consolation

Everything changes and nothing stands still.

Heraclitus

as quoted by Plato in Cratylus, 402a

Virtue alone affords everlasting and peace-giving joy; even if some obstacle arise, it is but like an intervening cloud, which floats beneath the sun but never prevails against it.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XXVII

Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for mutual ruin: the former loves society, the latter estrangement.

Seneca

On Anger to Novatus

At any rate, if you wish to sift doubtful meanings of this kind, teach us that the happy man is not he whom the crowd deems happy, namely, he into whose coffers mighty sums have flowed, but he whose possessions are all in his soul, who is upright and exalted, who spurns inconstancy, who sees no man with whom he wishes to change places, who rates men only at their value as men, who takes Nature for his teacher, conforming to her laws and living as she commands, whom no violence can deprive of his possessions, who turns evil into good, is unerring in judgment, unshaken, unafraid, who may be moved by force but never moved to distraction, whom Fortune when she hurls at him with all her might the deadliest missile in her armoury, may graze, though rarely, but never wound.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XLV: On sophistical argumentation

These actions are not essentially difficult; it is we ourselves that are soft and flabby.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter LXXI: On the supreme good

Octavia lost Marcellus, whom both his father-in-law and his uncle had begun to depend upon, and to place upon his shoulders the weight of the empire — a young man of keen intelligence and firm character, frugal and moderate in his desires to an extent which deserved especial admiration in one so young and so wealthy, strong to endure labour, averse to indulgence, and able to bear whatever burden his uncle might choose to lay, or I may say to pile upon his shoulders. Augustus had well chosen him as a foundation, for he would not have given way under any weight, however excessive.

Seneca

To Marcia on Consolation

If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations 6.21

Meanwhile, hold fast to this thought, and grip it close: yield not to adversity; trust not to prosperity; keep before your eyes the full scope of Fortune’s power, as if she would surely do whatever is in her power to do.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter LXXVIII: On the Healing Power of the Mind

Other vices can be concealed and cherished in secret; anger shows itself openly and appears in the countenance, and the greater it is, the more plainly it boils forth. Do you not see how in all animals certain signs appear before they proceed to mischief, and how their entire bodies put off their usual quiet appearance and stir up their ferocity? Boars foam at the mouth and sharpen their teeth by rubbing them against trees, bulls toss their horns in the air and scatter the sand with blows of their feet.

Seneca

On Anger to Novatus

Very often the things that cost nothing cost us the most heavily; I can show you many objects the quest and acquisition of which have wrested freedom from our hands.

Seneca

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter XLII: On Values

Since it is possible that you might depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations II.11