Knowledge of divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity.
Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.
I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.
What we have caught and what we have killed we have left behind, but what has escaped us we bring with us.
Of all whose words I have heard, no one attains to this, to know that wisdom is apart from all.
Bigotry is the sacred disease.
The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign.
This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.
The fairest order in the world is a heap of random sweepings.
Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: “Present, they are absent.”
It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.
War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.
The Cosmos was not made by gods but always was and is eternal fire.
The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice but that some things stay the same only by changing.
War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free.
Fire lives in the death of earth, air lives in the death of fire, water lives in the death of air, and earth in the death of water.
To fight with desire is hard: whatever it wishes, it buys at the price of soul.
The kosmos works by harmony of tensions, like lyre and bow. Good and evil are one. On the one hand God sees all as well, fair, and good; on the other hand a human being sees injustice here, justice there. Justice in our minds is strife. We cannot help but see war makes us as we are.
If they are gods, why do you lament them? If you lament them, you must no longer regard them as gods.
Although the Word is common to all, many live as if they had a private understanding of their own.