Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
HeraclitusRead
The Cosmos was not made by gods but always was and is eternal fire.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The cosmos is a timeless entity, not created by divine beings but is a manifestation of eternal processes.
Heraclitus suggests that the universe, or cosmos, is not a product of gods or specific creation events but rather a continuous existence characterized by change and transformation, symbolized here as 'eternal fire.' This reflects his broader philosophical view of the constant state of flux and the unity of opposites in nature, emphasizing that what is real is always in a state of becoming rather than static being.
Themes
CosmosEternalChangePhilosophyFire
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about ancient philosophy, I would reference this quote to discuss views on the nature of the universe.
More from Heraclitus
All quotes βThinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.
HeraclitusRead
Things of which there is sight, hearing, apprehension, these I prefer.
HeraclitusRead
Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.
HeraclitusRead
For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: βLiving and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."
HeraclitusRead
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
HeraclitusRead
Similar quotes
A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might be even more difficult to save.
C. S. LewisRead
The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.Read
I never felt any attraction towards violence. I never tried to express myself through violence. Violence is a language.
Elie WieselRead
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
Wendell BerryRead
We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before him, who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king.
Brother LawrenceRead
More and more of us live segmented, compartmentalized lives. This isn't natural. For millions of years, our forebears knew everyone around them and everyone knew them.
Helen FisherRead