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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Knowledge requires attention to details, and truth involves unexpected elements and holistic understanding.
This quote by Heraclitus emphasizes the importance of understanding the intricacies of the world and the necessity of recognizing that knowledge and intelligence are distinct. It suggests that while change is a constant in life, everything is interconnected, and one must be prepared for surprises in the quest for truth, as everything follows its own natural rhythm or season.
Themes
KnowledgeTruthChangeInterconnectednessPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a philosophical debate about the nature of reality.
More from Heraclitus
All quotes →Thinking 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: “Living 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
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
HeraclitusRead
Similar quotes
INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
Ambrose BierceRead
It is the Germans who are responsible for the fact that I became a fabricator of arms. If not for them, I would have constructed agricultural machines. (...) If someone asks me how I can sleep at night knowing that my arms have killed millions of people, I respond that I have no problem sleeping, my conscience is clean. I constructed arms to defend my country.
Mikhail KalashnikovRead
Tolerance always has limits - it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant.
Sidney HookRead
I'm more than willing to go to places and talk to people who believe that I am an illegal alien who deserves to be jailed. I want to look them in the eye and say, 'What makes you think I'm any different from you?' I think for our generation, immigration rights is a civil rights issue.
Jose Antonio VargasRead
I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.
Charles De GaulleRead
Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead