Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
HeraclitusRead
People ought to fight to keep their law as to defend the city s walls.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of valuing and defending one's principles and laws just as one would protect a city.
Heraclitus highlights that just as a city must be defended from external threats, individuals should also take a stand to protect their values and laws. This reflects the belief that societal order and personal integrity require active defense and engagement rather than passive acceptance.
Themes
LawDefensePrinciplesSocietyValues
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate on civic responsibility, you could use this quote to stress the importance of defending societal values.
More from Heraclitus
All quotes →Thinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.
HeraclitusRead
Things of which there is sight, hearing, apprehension, these I prefer.
HeraclitusRead
Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.
HeraclitusRead
For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: “Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."
HeraclitusRead
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
HeraclitusRead
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Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.
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If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive
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Faith is the evidence of the unseen.
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I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.
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Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am.
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When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb the depths of Homeric profundity. Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés moves us because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion. . . . Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion borders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the Sublime.
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