“The most difficult thing in life is, to know yourself”
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus (c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition.
“Ostia, Baths of the Seven Sages (II),” photographed by George Houston, is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The first page of the biography of Thales in an edition of Lives of Eminent Philosophers published in France in 1761 (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
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John Mitchell Mason (March 19, 1770 – December 26, 1829) was an American preacher and theologian who was Provost of Columbia College in the early 1810s, and briefly President of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in the early 1820s.
A memento mori mosaic from excavations in the convent of San Gregorio in Rome, featuring the Greek motto.
