Harmony of Opposites: Classical Source Texts and Translations

A collection of quotes about the harmony of opposites were assembled and chosen from Classical Greek and Chinese Philosophers. These quotes are presented in their original language with transliteration and translation provided in a line-by-line format. For Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans, the Loeb Classical Library was used to review early and late sources in the original Greek. Aristotle’s book 1 of the Metaphysics is the main primary source text for many of the Pythagorean quotes. The Loeb Library provides material in the original Greek as well as an English translation. The original Chinese source material was gathered from the Chinese Text Project. Each chosen quote is shared in tabular form, with the original language (Greek or Chinese) along with new transliterations and translations. The transliterations each come from OpenAI’s GPT4, with various edits. The translations are based on a consideration of multiple existing translations, including those from GPT4. Each line is rendered with alignment, so that comparisons with the original language can be readily made by those who wish to do so. Efforts were made to retain the word order and to use appropriate cognates in order to facilitate connection with the original. The goal of this sourcing and translation is to make these early texts more accessible to non-specialists. The other primary goal of this method is to highlight important meanings that are not always clear in existing translations.