Empedocles Quotes

• Each man believes only his experience.

  Empedocles

  Believe, Men

  109 Copy quote

• There are forces in nature called Love and Hate. The force of Love causes elements to be attracted to each other and to be built up into some particular form or person, and the force of Hate causes the decomposition of things.

  Empedocles

  Nature, Hate, Environmental

  159 Copy quote

• None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man, it has always been.

  Empedocles

  Men, World

  89 Copy quote

• For before this I was born once a boy, and a maiden, and a plant, and a bird, and a darting fish in the sea.

  Empedocles

  Boys, Sea, Bird

  110 Copy quote

• Having glimpsed a small part of life, men rise up and disappear as smoke, knowing only what each one has learned.

  Empedocles

  Men, Knowing, Disappear

  76 Copy quote

• What is right may properly be uttered even twice.

  Empedocles

  May

  53 Copy quote

• Blessed is he who has acquired a wealth of divine wisdom, but miserable he in whom there rests a dim opinion concerning the gods.

  Empedocles

  Blessed, Divine Wisdom, Opinion

  61 Copy quote

• At one time through love all things come together into one, at another time through strife s hatred, they are borne each of them apart.

  Empedocles

  Love, Hatred, Together

  81 Copy quote

• Many fires burn below the surface.

  Empedocles

  Fire, Surface, Below The Surface

  49 Copy quote

• The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed.

  Empedocles

  Love Is, Hands, Four Elements

  130 Copy quote

• The sea is the sweat of the earth.

  Empedocles

  Sea, Sweat, Earth

  Empedocles (1992). “The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation with an Introduction”

  38 Copy quote

• What is lawful is not binding only on some and not binding on others. Lawfulness extends everywhere, through the wide-ruling air and the boundless light of the sky.

  Empedocles

  Light, Air, Sky

  40 Copy quote

• But come, hear my words, for truly learning causes the mind to grow. For as I said before in declaring the ends of my words: Twofold is the truth I shall speak; for at one time there grew to be the one alone out of many, and at another time it separated so that there were many out of the one; fire and water and earth and boundless height of air, and baneful Strife apart from these, balancing each of them, and Love among them, their equal in length and breadth.

  Empedocles

  Fire, Air, Water

  48 Copy quote

• There is an utterance of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, eternal, sealed fast with broad oaths: whenever any one defiles his body sinfully with bloody gore or perjures himself in regard to wrong-doing, one of those spirits who are heir to long life, thrice ten thousand seasons shall he wander apart from the blessed, being born meantime in all sorts of mortal forms, changing one bitter path of life for another.

  Empedocles

  Blessed, Long, Utterance

  35 Copy quote

• Iris from sea brings wind or mighty rain.

  Empedocles

  Rain, Science, Wind

  28 Copy quote

• Earth's sweat, the sea.

  Empedocles

  Science, Sea, Sweat

  Parmenides, Empedocles (2011). “Parmenides and Empedocles: The Fragments in Verse Translation”, p.45, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  12 Copy quote

• Various accounts of Empedocle's death are given in ancient sources. His enemies said that his desire to be thought a god led him to throw himself into the crater of Mount Etna so that he might vanish from the world completely and thus lead men to believe he had achieved apotheosis. Unfortunately the volcano defeated his design by throwing out one of the philosopher's sandals.

  Empedocles

  Death, Believe, Science

  31 Copy quote

• [On the volcano.] And many a fire there burns beneath the ground.

  Empedocles

  Fire, Volcanoes

  "The Fragments of Empedocles". Book by Empedocles, translated by William Ellery Leonard, 1908.

  18 Copy quote

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