Heraclitus

[tuku747]

The Word proves those first hearing it
as numb to understanding
as the ones who have not heard.
Yet all things follow from The Word.

Some, blundering
try in vain with empty talk
to separate the essences of things
and say how each thing truly is.

For wisdom, listen
not to me, but to The Word,
and know that All is One.

People dull their wits with gibberish,
and cannot use their ears and eyes.

Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have souls that understand not their language.

Things keep their secrets.
Nature loves to hide.

What eyes witness,
ears believe on hearsay.

If learning were a path of wisdom,
those most learned about myth
would not believe, with Hesiod,
that Pallas in her wisdom gloats
over the noise of battle.

Pythagoras may well have been
the deepest in his learning of all men.
And still he claimed to recollect
details of former lives,
being in one a cucumber
and one time a sardine.

Wisdom is One Thing.
It is to know The Thought by which all things are steered through all things.

This world, which is the same for all,
no one of gods or men has made;
but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be
an Everliving Fire
with measures of it kindling
and measures going out.

All things are an exchange for Fire,
and Fire for all things,
even as wares for gold and gold for wares.

Fires lives the death of air,
and air lives the death of fire;
water lives the death of earth,
earth that of water.

Many who have learned
from Hesiod the countless names
of gods and monsters
never understand
than night and day are one.

Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools;
what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened.

The river where you set your foot just now
is gone

those waters giving way to this
and now this

You cannot step in the same river twice.

Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself.
It is an attunement of opposite tensions,
like that of the bow and lyre.

From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony.

The straight and the crooked path of the fuller’s comb is one and the same.

An ass prefers a bed of litter
to a golden throne.

Good and ill are one.

Good and ill to the physician
surely must be one,
since he derives his fee
from torturing the sick.

The way up is the way back.

The way up and the way down is one and the same.

Applicants for wisdom
do what I have done:
inquire within.

Just as the river where I step
is not the same, and is,
so I am as I am not.

We step and do not step into the same rivers;
we are and are not.

Goat cheese melted
in warm wine congeals
if not well stirred.

Although we need The Word
to keep things known in common,
people still treat specialists
as if their nonsense
were a form of wisdom.

People need not act and speak
as if they were asleep.

The ape apes find
most beautiful
looks apish
to non-apes.

Yearning hurts,
and what release
may come of it
fells much like death.

All people ought to know themselves
and everyone be wholly mindful.

Not to be quite such a fool
sounds good. The trick,
with so much wine
and easy company, is how.

As for the Ephesians,
I would have them, youths,
elders, and all those between,
go hang themselves, leaving the city
in the abler hands of children….

Stupidity is doomed, therefore, 
to cringe at every syllable of wisdom.

One’s bearing shapes one’s fate.

Tainted souls who try
to purify themselves with blood
are like the man
who steps in filth and thinks
to bathe in sewage.

Silence, healing.

Heraclitus 

Edited May 26 by tuku747

[Breakingthewall]

Heraclitus is absolutely right. Everything is in his simplicity.

 

Everything flows. 

You cannot step into the same river twice.

The path up and down is one and the same.

What opposes unites; the finest harmony arises from tensions.

This cosmos, the same for all, no god nor man made, but it always was, is, and shall be: an ever-living fire, kindling in measure and going out in measure.

Although the logos is common, most people live as if they had a private understanding.

They do not understand how what is at variance with itself agrees with itself.

The waking have one common world; the sleeping turn aside each into a world of their own.

Time is a child playing draughts; the kingly power is a child's.

War is the father of all and king of all.

The bow's name is life, but its work is death.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

The limits of the soul you would not find, even if you traveled every road.

Dogs bark at what they do not understand.

It is hard to fight with anger, for whatever it wants, it buys at the price of the soul.

A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.

Character is destiny.

Cold things warm, warm cools, wet dries, parched is moistened.

The sea is the purest and most polluted water: for fish drinkable and life-preserving; for men undrinkable and destructive.

 

Edited May 26 by Breakingthewall

[krazzer]

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