Heraclitus · a new plain-English translation from the original language
B51. They do not comprehend how, at variance with itself, it agrees with itself: a back-turning attunement, as of the bow and the lyre. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 9)
B52. Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces on a board: the kingship belongs to a child. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 9)
B53. War is father of all and king of all; some it has shown to be gods, others human beings; some it has made slaves, others free. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 9)
B54. An unseen attunement is stronger than a visible one. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 9)
B55. Whatever comes by sight, hearing, learning — that I prefer. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 9)
B56. People are deceived about the knowledge of visible things much as Homer was, who was wiser than all the Greeks. For boys killing lice deceived him by saying: what we saw and caught, we leave behind; what we neither saw nor caught, we carry with us. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 9)
B57. The teacher of most is Hesiod. They are sure he knew the most things — a man who did not recognize day and night: for they are one. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 10)
B58. Doctors, at any rate, who cut and cauterize and torment the sick cruelly in every way, then complain that they get no fee from the sick — though they deserve nothing, since they produce the same things: the cures and the diseases. (Hippolytus, Refutation IX 10)
B59. The path of the letters, he says, straight and crooked, is one and the same.
B60. The road up and the road down: one and the same.