None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man, it has always been.

Having glimpsed a small part of life, men rise up and disappear as smoke, knowing only what each one has learned.

Various accounts of Empedocle's death are given in ancient sources. His enemies said that his desire to be thought a god led him to throw himself into the crater of Mount Etna so that he might vanish from the world completely and thus lead men to believe he had achieved apotheosis. Unfortunately the volcano defeated his design by throwing out one of the philosopher's sandals.

None of the gods has formed the world, nor has any man, it has always been.

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.

For before this I was born once a boy, and a maiden, and a plant, and a bird, and a darting fish in the sea.

Earth's sweat, the sea.