Q0016

Heraclitus

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

A person's character is their destiny.
Thinker Heraclitus
School Pre-Socratic
Source Fragment DK B119
Theme Character
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Fragment DK B119, within the tradition of Pre-Socratic. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of character, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Heraclitus's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Heraclitus. (n.d.). A person's character is their destiny. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0016

MLA: Heraclitus. “A person's character is their destiny..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0016.

Chicago: Heraclitus. “A person's character is their destiny..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0016.

Same thinker

More from Heraclitus

  1. Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
  2. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  3. I searched for myself.

All quotations by Heraclitus

Same theme

More on character

  1. Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is dyed by its impressions.
  2. Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent.
  3. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts.
  4. The Master said: Only when the year turns cold do we know that the pine and cypress are the last to wither.
  5. I say that the noble and good man and woman are happy, and the unjust and wicked are miserable.

Browse the character theme