Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.
AnaxagorasRead
The Greeks are wrong to recognize coming into being and perishing; for nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being composition and perishing dissolution.
Interpretation
Anaxagoras argues that nothing truly comes into existence or ceases to exist; instead, things are simply formed or broken down from existing materials.
In this quote, Anaxagoras challenges the conventional Greek belief about existence, asserting that what we perceive as coming into being or perishing is merely a transformation of existing substances. He suggests that all matter is eternal, and that what we label as creation or destruction is actually just a rearrangement of what is already present, calling for a more nuanced understanding of existence.
In practice
During a lecture on ancient philosophy, you might use this quote to illustrate differing notions of existence.
Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.
It is not I who have lost the Athenians, but the Athenians who have lost me.
Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away.
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock.
And since the portions of the great and the small are equal in number, so too all things would be in everything. Nor is it possible that they should exist apart, but all things have a portion of everything.
The descent into Hades is much the same from whatever place we start.
The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.
In real life as in grand opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.
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