Date: c. 501 B.C.

"For souls it is death to become water, and for water death to become earth. Water comes into existence out of earth, and soul out of water."

— Heraklitus (fl. 504-1 BCE)

Date: c. 501 B.C.

"One would never discover the limits of soul, should one traverse every road--so deep a measure does it possess."

— Heraklitus (fl. 504-1 BCE)

Date: c. 501 B.C.

"A dry gleam of light is the wisest and best soul."

— Heraklitus (fl. 504-1 BCE)

Date: c. 458 BC

"This now at one moment bodes ill, while then again hope, shining with kindly light from the sacrifices, wards off the biting care of the sorrow that gnaws my heart."

— Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC-c. 456/455)

Date: c. 458 BC

"Zeus, whoever he may be,--if by this name it pleases him to be invoked, by this name I call to him--as I weigh all things in the balance, I have nothing to compare save “Zeus,” if in truth I must cast aside this vain burden from my heart."

— Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC-c. 456/455)

Date: 420 BC

It does, but not for you. Truth is not in you--for your ears, your mind, your eyes are blind!

— Sophocles (495 BC - 405 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"So this journey which is now ordained for me carries a happy prospect for any other man also who believes that his mind has been prepared by purification."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"Because every pleasure or pain has a sort of rivet with which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it down and makes it corporeal, accepting as true whatever the body certifies."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"[T]here is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by such studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes, for by it only is reality beheld."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"The body is held together at a certain tension between the extremes of hot and cold, and dry and wet, and so on, and our soul is a temperament or adjustment of these same extremes, when they are combined in just the right proportion."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)