Four Elements Quotes

• It's said that when we die, the four elements - earth, air, fire and water - dissolve one by one, each into the other, and finally just dissolve into space. But while we're living, we share the energy that makes everything, from a blade of grass to an elephant, grow and live and then inevitably wear out and die. This energy, this life force, creates the whole world.

  Pema Chodron

  Life, Fire, Air

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• Awareness is a mirror reflecting the four elements. Beauty is a heart that generates love and a mind that is open.

  Nhat Hanh

  Heart, Mirrors, Mind

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Present Moment Wonderful Moment: Mindfulness Verses for Daily Living: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.15, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Everything was simple, physical, painful, exalting. The world consisted of the four elements - land and water, firepower and distancing air.

  Susan Sontag

  Life, Simple, Air

  Susan Sontag (1992). “The Volcano Lover”

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• Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Nature, Teaching, Ambition

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• Of the four elements water is the second in weight and the second in respect of mobility. It is never at rest until it unites with the sea.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Nature, Travel, Sea

  Leonardo da Vinci (2008). “Notebooks”, p.21, OUP Oxford

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• The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed.

  Empedocles

  Love Is, Hands, Joy

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• If you have five elements available use only four. If you have four elements use three.

  Pablo Picasso

  Three, Use, Available

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• Four elements make up the climate of war: danger, exertion, uncertainty and chance.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Climate, Chance

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.104, Princeton University Press

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• The energies represented by the four #‎ elements are ulitimately the fundamental realities of life that are being analysed with #‎ astrology

  Stephen Arroyo

  Reality, Astrology, Energy

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• Worldviews have four elements that help us understand how a person's story fits together: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. "Creation" tells us how things began, where everything came from (including us), the reason for our origins, and what ultimate reality is like. "Fall" describes the problem (since we all know something has gone wrong with the world). "Redemption" gives us the solution, the way to fix what went wrong. "Restoration" describes what the world would look like once the repair begins to take place.

  Greg Koukl

  Fall, Reality, Giving

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• Water is also one of the four elements, the most beautiful of God's creations. It is both wet and cold, heavy, and with a tendency to descend, and flows with great readiness. It is this the Holy Scripture has in view when it says, "And the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Water, then, is the most beautiful element and rich in usefulness, and purifies from all filth, and not only from the filth of the body but from that of the soul, if it should have received the grace of the Spirit.

  John of Damascus

  Beautiful, Should Have, Views

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• Nature that framed us of four elements, Warring within our breasts for regiment, Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Wills us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

  Christopher Marlowe

  Sweet, Moving, Climbing

  'Tamburlaine the Great' (1590) pt. 1, act 2, sc. 7

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• Through a particular magical practice it is possible to modify the being that has only one element into a being with four elements and to give it an immortal spirit. But a magicial will seldom intervene without good reason, because he is responsible and must justify his actions before Divine Providence.

  Franz Bardon

  Practice, Giving, Magic

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• But this mind isn't somewhere outside the material body of the four elements. Without this mind we can't move. The body has no awareness. Like a plant or a stone, the body has no nature. So how does it move? It's the mind that moves.

  Bodhidharma

  Moving, Mind, Doe

  Bodhidharma (2009). “The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma”, p.43, Macmillan

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• For the elements have the property of moving back to their place in a straight line, but they have no properties which would cause them to remain where they are, or to move otherwise than in a straight line. The rectilinear motions of these four elements when returning to their original place are of two kinds, either centrifugal, viz., the motion of the air and the fire; or centripedal, viz., the motion of the earth, and the water; and when the elements have reached their original place, they remain at rest.

  Maimonides

  Wise, Moving, Two

  "The Guide for the Perplexed".

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• Fire, loveliest of the four elements of the world, and yet an element too in Hell. While it burned adoringly in the core of the Temple, it had also scorched the life from a city, this night, and spewed its venom over the land. How strange of God to speak from a burning bush, and of Man to make a symbol of Heaven into a symbol of Hell.

  Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  Night, Men, Fire

  Walter M. Miller Jr (2014). “A Canticle For Leibowitz”, p.156, Hachette UK

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• Man's nature is made up of four elements, which produce in him four attributes, namely, the beastly, the brutal, the satanic, and the divine. In man there is something of the pig, the dog, the devil, and the saint.

  Al-Ghazali

  Dog, Men, Pigs

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• Now let us regard the idea of God from the magic standpoint, according to the four elements, the so-called tetragrammaton, the unspeakable, the supreme: the fiery principle involves the almightiness and the omnipotence, the airy principle owns the wisdom, purity and clarity, from which aspect proceeds the universal lawfulness. Love and eternal life are attributed to the watery principle, and omnipresence, immortality and consequently eternity belong to the earth principle. These four aspects together represent the supreme Godhead.

  Franz Bardon

  Omnipotence, Ideas, Magic

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• Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It’s not the tobacco we’re after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.

  Tom Robbins

  Home, Fire, Volcanoes

  "Still Life with Woodpecker". Book by Tom Robbins, 1980.

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• While all bodies are composed of the four elements, that is, of heat, moisture, the earthy, and air, yet there are mixtures according to natural temperament which make up the natures of all the different animals of the world, each after its kind.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Animal, Air, Different

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter IV, Section 5,

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• Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.

  Will Durant

  Art, Men, Order

  Will Durant (2011). “Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

  Antonio Tabucchi

  Thinking, Hands, Three

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• Whenever learners or those beyond learning awaken the mind, for the first time they plant one buddha-nature. Working with the four elements and five clusters, if they practice sincerely they attain enlightenment. Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment. This is because the four elements and five clusters and plants, trees, fences and walls are fellow students; because they are of the same essence, because they are the same mind and the same life, because they are the same body and the same mechanism.

  Dogen

  Life, Wall, Essence

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• Vegetables are organized bodies that grow on the dry areas of the globe and within its waters. Their function is to combine immediately the four elements and to serve as food for animals.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Animal, Vegetables, Water

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• Four elements, Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, also provide an example of the astonishing togetherness of our universe. They make up the "organic" molecules that constitute living organisms on a planet, and the nuclei of these same elements interact to generate the light of its star. Then the organisms on the planet come to depend wholly on that starlight, as they must if life is to persist. So it is that all life on the Earth runs on sunlight. [Referring to photosynthesis]

  George Wald

  Life, Running, Stars

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