Fragment 1 :

Fragment 2 :

Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

Fragment 3 :

The sun is the width of a man's foot.

Fragment 4 :

Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat.

Fragment 4a :

Fragment 5 :

They purify themselves by defiling-themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to go and wash his feet in mud.

Fragment 6 :

The sun is new every day.

Fragment 7 :

If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.

Fragment 8 :

It is the opposite which is good for us.

Fragment 9 :

Asses would rather have straw than gold.

Fragment 10 :

Couples are things whole and not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.

Fragment 11 :

Every beast is tended with blows.

Fragment 12 :

You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are flowing in upon you.

Fragment 13 :

Pigs delight in the mire more than in clean water.

Fragment 14 :

Night-walkers, Magians, priests of Bakchos and priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers..

Fragment 15 :

For if it were not to Dionysos that they made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysos in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the winevat.

Fragment 16 :

How can one hide from that which never sinks to rest ?

Fragment 17 :

The many have not as many thoughts as the things they meet with; nor, if they do remark them, do they understand them, though they believe they do.

Fragment 18 :

If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.

Fragment 19 :

Knowing not how to listen nor how to speak.

Fragment 20 :

When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms or rather to rest, and they leave children behind them to meet with, dooms in turn.

Fragment 21 :

All the things we see when awake are death, even as the things we see in slumber are sleep.

Fragment 22 :

Those who seek for gold dig up much earth and find a little.

Fragment 23 :

Men would not have known the name of justice if these things were not.

Fragment 24 :

Gods and men honour those who are slain in battle.

Fragment 25 :

Greater deaths win greater portions.

Fragment 26 :

Man is kindled and put out like a light in the nighttime.

Fragment 27 :

There awaits men when they die such things as they look not for nor dream of.

Fragment 28 :

. . . bringing untrustworthy witnesses in support of disputed points.

Fragment 29 :

For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts.

Fragment 30 :

This order, which is the same in all : things no'one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now and ever ,shall be an everliving. Fire, fixed measures of it kindling and fixed measures going out.

Fragment 31 :

The transformations of Fire are first of all sea and alf of the sea is earth half fiery stormcloud.

Fragment 32 :

Wisdom is one only. It is willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus.

Fragment 33 :

And it is the law, too, that we obey the counsel of one.

Fragments 34 :

Fools when they do hear are like the deaf; of them, does the proverb bear witness that they are absent, when, present.

Fragment 35 :

Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.

Fragment 36 :

For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth. But water comes from earth ; and, from water, soul.

Fragment 37 :

Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.

Fragment 38 :

Fragment 39 :

In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the rest. (He said, “ Most men are bad.”).

Fragment 40 :

The learning of many things teacheth not understanding, else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hekataios.

Fragment 41 :

Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.

Fragment 42 :

Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, and Archilochos likewise.

Fragment 43 :

Wantonness needs to be extinguished even more than a conflagration.

Fragment 44 :

The people must fight for its law as for its walls.

Fragment 45 :

You will not find the boundaries of soul by travelling in any direction.

Fragment 46 :

Fragment 47 :

Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.

Fragment 48 :

The bow is called life (βίος), but its work is death.

Fragment 49 :

One is as ten thousand to me, if he be the best.

Fragment 49 a :

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

Fragment 50 :

It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.

Fragment 51 :

Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre.

Fragment 52 :

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

Fragment 53 :

War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.

Fragment 54 :

The hidden harmony is better than the open.

Fragment 55 :

Am I to prize these things above what can be seen, heard, and learned ?

Fragment 56 :

Fragment 57 :

Hesiod is most men's teacher. Men think he knew very many things, a man who did not know day or night! They are one.

Fragment 58 :

Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, then complain that they do not get any adequate recompense for it.

Fragment 59 :

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

Fragment 60 :

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

Fragment 61 :

The sea is the purest and the impurest water Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive.

Fragment 62 :

Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the other's death and dying the other's life.

Fragment 63 :

. . . that they rise up and become the guardians of the hosts as of the quick and dead.

Fragment 64 :

The thunderbolt steers all things.

Fragment 65:

Fire is want and surfeit.

Fragment 66:

Fire will come upon and lay hold of all things.

Fragment 67:

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with different incenses, is named according to the savour of each.

Fragment 67a:

Fragment 68:

Fragment 69:

Fragment 70:

Fragment 71:

Fragment 72:

They are estranged from that with which they have most constant intercourse.

Fragment 73:

It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep.

Fragment 74:

Fragment 75:

Those who are asleep are fellow-workers...

Fragment 76:

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

Fragment 77:

It is pleasure to souls to become moist.

Fragment 78:

The way of man has no wisdom, but that of the gods has.

Fragment 79:

Man is called a baby by god, even as a child by a man.

Fragment 80:

We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.

Fragment 81:

Fragment 82:

The most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.

Fragment 83:

The wisest man is an ape compared to god, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.

Fragment 84 :

Fragment 85:

It is hard to fight with desires Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.

Fragment 86:

... (The wise man) is not known because of men's want of belief.

Fragment 87:

The fool is fluttered at every word.

Fragment 88:

And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old ; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former.

Fragment 89:

The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.

Fragment 90:

All things are exchanged for Fire, and Fire for all things as wares are exchanged for gold, and gold for wares.

Fragment 91:

You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.

Fragment 92:

Fragment 93:

The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.

Fragment 94:

The sun will not exceed his measures does the Erinyes, the avenging. handmaids of Justice will find him out

Fragment 95:

It is best to hide folly.

Fragment 96:

Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

Fragment 97:

Dogs bark at every one they do not know.

Fragment 98:

Souls smell in Hades.

Fragment 99:

If there were no sun, it would be night.

Fragment 100:

...the seasons that bring all things.

I dived into myself ... (...) ... The eyes are more exact witness than ears.

Fragment 102:

To a god all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.

Fragment 103:

The beginning and the end are common (to both paths).

Fragment 104:

For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad and few good.

Fragment 105:

Fragment 106:

One day is equal to another.

Fragment 107:

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

Fragment 108:

Of all whose discourses I have heard there is not one who attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from other things.

Fragment 109:

Fragment 110:

It is no good for men to get all they wish to get.

Fragment 111:

It is sickness that makes health pleasant; evil, good; hunger, plenty; weariness, rest.

Fragment 112:

Fragment 113:

Thought is common to all.

Fragment 114:

Men themselves have made a law for themselves, not knowing what they made it about but the gods have ordered the nature of all things. Now the arrangements which men have made are never constant, neither when they are right they are wrong; but all the arrangements which the gods have made are always right, both when they are right nor when they are wrong; so great is the difference.

Fragment 115:

Fragment 116:

Fragment 117:

A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist.

Fragment 118:

The dry soul is the wised and best.

Fragment 119:

Man's character is his fate.

Fragment 120:

The limit of East and West is the Bear; and opposite the Bear is the boundary of bright Zeus.

Fragment 121:

The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless youths; for they have cast out Hermodoros, the best man among them, saying: « We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere ,and among others.»

Fragment 122:

Fragment 123:

Nature loves to hide.

Fragment 124:

Fragment 125:

Even the posset separates if it is not stirred.

Fragment 126:

It is cold things that become warm, and what is warm that cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened.

Fragment 127:

Fragment 128:

Fragment 129:

Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and choosing out these writings, claimed for is own wisdom what was but a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief.

Fragment 130:

Fragment 131:

Fragment 132:

Fragment 133:

Fragment 134:

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Fragment 138:

Fragment 139:

Fragment 139 :