Thales of Miletus

I taught Thales, foremost among the wise, that living and dying was a matter of indifference.

Thales, once inveighing in discourse against the pains and care men put themselves to to become rich, was answered by one in the company, that he did like the fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain.

after the example of Thales.

And when they asked Thales why he was not married, he said he did not care to start a bloodline.

Thales gave the truest limits, who, young and being importuned by his mother to marry, answered, “That it was too soon,” and, being grown into years and urged again, “That it was too late.

And yet some have boasted that they understood them, as Apollonius Tyanaus, Melampus, Tiresias, Thales, and others.

And for subtle cunning, can there be a more pregnant example than in the philosopher Thales’s mule?

Pherecydes, one of the seven sages, writing to Thales upon his death-bed;

Thales, who first inquired into this sort of matter, believed God to be a Spirit that made all things of water;

and Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras have enslaved him to necessity.

I am very well pleased with the Milesian girl, who observing the philosopher Thales to be always contemplating the celestial arch, and to have his eyes ever gazing upward, laid something in his way that he might stumble over, to put him in mind that it would be time to take up his thoughts about things that are in the clouds when he had provided for those that were under his feet.

As Socrates says, in Plato, “That whoever meddles with philosophy may be reproached as Thales was by the woman, that he sees nothing of that which is before him.

I do not know why I should not as willingly embrace either the ideas of Plato, or the atoms of Epicurus, or the plenum or vacuum of Leucippus and Democritus, or the water of Thales, or the infinity of nature of Anaximander, or the air of Diogenes, or the numbers and symmetry of Pythagoras, or the infinity of Parmenides, or the One of Musaeus, or the water and fire of Apollodorus, or the similar parts of Anaxagoras, or the discord and friendship of Empedocles, or the fire of Heraclitus, or any other opinion of that infinite confusion of opinions and determinations, which this fine human reason produces by its certitude and clearsightedness in every thing it meddles withal, as I should the opinion of Aristotle upon this subject of the principles of natural things;

nor of that which Thales attributed to things which themselves are reputed inanimate, lead thereto by the consideration of the loadstone;

Thales, a nature without repose;

For the contrary opinion of the immortality of the soul, which, Cicero says, was first introduced, according to the testimony of books at least, by Pherecydes Syrius, in the time of King Tullus (though some attribute it to Thales, and others to others), ’tis the part of human science that is treated of with the greatest doubt and reservation.

When Thales reputes the knowledge of man very difficult for man to comprehend, he at the same time gives him to understand that all other knowledge is impossible.

If he who asked Thales the Milesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committed adultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told him that he ought not to do it;

Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to shield the greater fault by the less;