Vitae philosophorum

To the question which is older, day or night, he replied: Night is the older by one day. Some one asked him whether a man could hide an evil deed from the gods: No, he replied, nor yet an evil thought. To the adulterer who inquired if he should deny the charge upon oath he replied that perjury was no worse than adultery. Being asked what is difficult, he replied, To know oneself. What is easy? To give advice to another. What is most pleasant? Success. What is the divine? That which has neither beginning nor end. To the question what was the strangest

What man is happy?He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind and a docile nature. He tells us to remember friends, whether present or absent; not to pride ourselves upon outward appearance, but to study to be beautiful in character. Shun ill-gotten gains, he says. Let not idle words prejudice thee against those who have shared thy confidence. Whatever provision thou hast made for thy parents, the same must thou expect from thy children. He explained the overflow of the Nile as due to the etesian winds which, blowing in the contrary direction, drove the waters upstream.

Apollodorus in his Chronology places his birth in the first year of the 35th Olympiad [640 B.C.].

He died at the age of 78 (or, according to Sosicrates, of 90 years); for he died in the 58th Olympiad, being contemporary with Croesus, whom he undertook to take across the Halys without building a bridge, by diverting the river.

There have lived five other men who bore the name of Thales, as enumerated by Demetrius of Magnesia in his Dictionary of Men of the Same Name: