Theophrastus c. 371 BC – c. 287 BC
Theophrastus of Eresus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the immediate successor of Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic School at the Lyceum in Athens. He directed the school for thirty-five years, from 322 BC until his death, and developed Aristotle's research programme particularly in botany, where his Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants founded systematic plant science. His Characters, a series of brief literary sketches of moral types, has been a model for the genre from antiquity to the present. His extensive philosophical writings on metaphysics, logic, and ethics survive only in fragments. He is reported to have brought the Peripatetic school to its peak, with two thousand students attending his lectures.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Greek
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Peripatetic School, Ancient Greek
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Theophrastus:
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”
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Attributed to Theophrastus:
“Superstition is the cowardice of the soul confronted with the divine.”
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Attributed to Theophrastus:
“We die just when we are beginning to live.”
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Attributed to Theophrastus:
“Plants, like animals, have their own kinds and their own characters.”
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Attributed to Theophrastus:
“The flatterer says what will please his hearer rather than what is true.”