Lucretius Quotes

All things around, convulsed with violent thunder, seem to tremble, and the mighty walls of the capacious world appear at once to have started and burst asunder.

Yet a little while, and (the happy hour) will be over, nor ever more shall we be able to recall it.

There is so much wrong with the world. (tanta stat praedita culpa)

It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the great distress of another.

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

Continual dropping wears away a stone.

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets.

For out of doubt In these affairs 'tis each man's will itself That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs Incipient motions are diffused.

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas

Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared.

Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working there.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

To ask for power is forcing uphill a stone which after all rolls back again from the summit and seeks in headlong haste the levels of the plain.

... deprived of pain, and also deprived of danger, able to do what it wants, [Nature] does not need us, nor understands our deserts, and it cannot be angry.

All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they're set, and where they're moved around.

Those things that are in the light we behold from darkness.

No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings - the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

Victory puts us on a level with heaven.

For there is a VOID in things; a truth which it will be useful for you, in reference to many points, to know; and which will prevent you from wandering in doubt.

Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.

Lucretius, who follows [Epicurus] in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual intercourse provided it is divorced from passion.

So much wrong could religion induce.

...Thus it comes That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains, Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, And whatsoever lives, if shut from food, Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.

Our life must once have end; in vain we fly From following Fate; e'en now, e'en now, we die.

When bodies spring apart, because the air Somehow condenses, wander they from truth: For then a void is formed, where none before; And, too, a void is filled which was before.

Confess then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.

I own with reason: for, if men but knew Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong By some device unconquered to withstand Religions and the menacings of seers.

Things stand apart so far and differ, that What's food for one is poison for another.

Falling drops will at last wear away stone.

You may complete as many generations as you please during your life; none the less will that everlasting death await you.

How many evils has religion caused! [Lat., Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!]

And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

Thus, then, the All that is is limited In no one region of its onward paths, For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others

The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind.

Visible objects therefore do not perish utterly, since nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death.

Nothing can dwindle to nothing, as Nature restores one thing from the stuff of another, nor does she allow a birth, without a corresponding death.

Burning fevers flee no swifter from your body if you toss under figured counterpanes and coverlets of crimson than if you must lie in rude homespun.

There can be no centrein infinity.

Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches.

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.