“Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise.”

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

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Do you have more details about the quote "Even a really bad creator would at least have started with Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Surprise." by Terry Pratchett?

Terry Pratchett796

English author 1948–2015

Hilda Lewis (1896–1974) British writer

Oath of the four Grant children, first used in Ch. 2 : And Continues
The Ship that Flew (1939)

“Imagine a world where nothing is stable. In the West, we have three moving elements -- Air, Fire, Water -- but at least we can depend on the fourth.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Philip
8 1/2 Women

“When earth meets with fire and is dissolved by the keenness of it, it would drift about, whether it were dissolved in fire itself, or in some mass of air or water, until the parts of it meeting and again being united became earth once more; for it never could pass into any other kind. But when water is divided by fire or by air, it may be formed again and become one particle of fire and two of air: and the divisions of air may become for every particle broken up two particles of fire. And again when fire is caught in air or in waters or in earth, a little in a great bulk, moving amid a rushing body, and contending with it is vanquished and broken up, two particles of fire combine into one figure of air: and when air is vanquished and broken small, from two whole and one half particle one whole figure of water will be composed. Let us also reckon it once again thus: when any of the other kinds is intercepted in fire and is divided by it through the sharpness of its angles and its sides, if it forms into the shape of fire, it at once ceases from being divided…”

Plato book Timaeus

Section 57a, Tr. R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato (1888) pp. 203-205. https://books.google.com/books?id=q2YMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA203 <br class="br">Timaeus

“Fire wants to burn
Water wants to flow
Air wants to rise
Earth wants to bind
Chaos wants to devour
-Iyana Sharpe”

isharpe001

“Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha