"... the world is alive and in dread; it is, as the ancient Greek philosopher Thales claimed, 'full of gods.'"

--- Painter Madeleine Avirov, in the opening sentence of an essay about her experience of poetry, in the January 2011 issue of Poetry.

In context:

When I wake in the night in fear I regain the knowledge that no child lacks: the world is alive and in dread; it is, as the ancient Greek philosopher Thales claimed, “full of gods.” The time is invariably between three and four in the morning.

This belief is attributed to Thales, according to Wikipedia, in Aristotle, De Anima, 411a7, and for other ancient sources see the discussion in Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, 93-7. A Crandall University philosophy department web page portrays it thus: "Thales' view seems to be as follows. As most Greeks, he holds that soul is the cause of all motion, even of inanimate objects. Thus, since there is motion, there must be a soul causing each instance of motion. . . . He then takes a further step and concludes that soul, or the cause of motion, is a god." Not quite as poetic as Avirov's gloss...