Timaeus
Timaeus
by Plato
Original title: Τίμαιος · First published 1520 · 280 pages · about 5 hours to read
Also as Kindle · AudiobookRead free on Project Gutenberg · Find in a library
About this book
Latin translation and commentary by Calcidius of a metaphysical dialogue of Plato, the Timaeus. For 800 years the only extensive text of Plato known in the Latin West.
Books like Timaeus
Quotes
“He soars into the heavens, and then, as if his wings were suddenly clipped, he walks ungracefully and with difficulty upon the earth.”
More quotes
“The Greek philosopher looked at the blue circle of the heavens and it flashed upon him that all things were one; the tumult of sense abated, and the mind found repose in the thought which former generations had been striving to realize.”
“We know that ‘being’ is only the verb of existence, the copula, the most general symbol of relation, the first and most meagre of abstractions; but to some of the ancient philosophers this little word appeared to attain divine proportions, and to comprehend all truth.”
“The generations of men, like the leaves of the forest, come and go, but the mathematical laws by which the world is governed remain, and seem as if they could never change.”
“Even the fetichism of the savage is the beginning of reasoning; the assumption of the most fanciful of causes indicates a higher mental state than the absence of all enquiry about them.”
Passages from the book's public-domain text on Project Gutenberg. Translated by Benjamin Jowett.