Empedocles Quotes on Nature
Empedocles, the Sicilian Pre-Socratic philosopher, gave Greek thought one of its most influential accounts of nature, and the quotes gathered here present its main elements. Empedocles held that all things are composed of four roots, earth, water, air, and fire, mixed and separated by the two cosmic powers of Love and Strife, which alternately rule and are ruled in turn. On this view there is, strictly speaking, no birth and no death: there is only mingling and interchange of what is mingled, as the elements combine and dissolve. His poem the Purifications joined this physics to a doctrine of the transmigration of souls, in the famous lines recalling past lives as a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird and a mute fish in the sea. Drawn from the surviving fragments, these passages present nature as the endless recombination of unchanging elements; the most condensed are marked as attributed.
Quotes
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Attributed to Empedocles:
“There are four roots of all things: bright Zeus, life-giving Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis whose tear-drops are a well-spring to mortals.”
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Attributed to Empedocles:
“Love and Strife alternately rule and are ruled in turn.”
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Attributed to Empedocles:
“There is no birth in mortal things, nor any end in ruinous death; there is only mingling and interchange of what is mingled.”
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“I have already once been a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird and a mute fish in the sea.”
ἤδη γάρ ποτ’ ἐγὼ γενόμην κοῦρός τε κόρη τε θάμνος τ’ οἰωνός τε καὶ ἔξαλος ἔλλοπος ἰχθύς. -
“For already, sometime, I have been a boy and a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a silent fish in the sea.”
Purifications -
“From such honor and such a height of fortune am I, thus fallen to earth, cast down amongst mortals.”
Purifications -
“With deep roots Ether plunged into earth.”
On Nature