Men conceal the past scenes of their lives.
The mask is torn off, while the reality remains.
We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body.
Nature impelled men to make sounds with their tongues And they found it useful to give names to things Much for the same reason that we see children now Have recourse to gestures because they cannot speak And point their fingers at things which appear before them.
To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.
We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.
Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.
To ask for power is forcing uphill a stone which after all rolls back again from the summit and seeks in headlong haste the levels of the plain.
The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.
Things stand apart so far and differ, that What’s food for one is poison for another.
The sum total of all sums total is eternal.
No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings – the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.
For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.
From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.
In a brief space the generations of beings are changed, and, like runners, pass on the torches of life.
Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.
The body searches for that which has injured the mind with love.
Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.
So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.
So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.