Lucretius quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Lucretius

Lucretius Famous Quotes & Sayings

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Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

So much wrong could religion induce.

The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.

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

It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.

Sweet it is, when on the high seas the winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the land on another's struggles.

Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is.

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

So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.

One Man's food is another Man's Poison

Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.

How many evils have flowed from religion.

Victory puts us on a level with heaven.

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.

All life is a struggle in the dark.

Epicurus ... whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.

Men conceal the past scenes of their lives.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.

The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.

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

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.

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

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

All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.

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

You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely.

From the midst of the very fountain of pleasure, something of bitterness arises to vex us in the flower of enjoyment.

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

To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.

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

The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.

Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.

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

No matter how difficult a task may look.. Persistence and steady action will get you through

It's easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net.

We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body.

The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.

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

Whenever anything changes and quits its proper limits, this change is at once the death of that which was before.

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

The sum total of all sums total is eternal (meaning the universe).
[Lat., Summarum summa est aeternum.]

Fear is the mother of all gods.

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

Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.

We in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.

From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.

In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.

O goddess, bestow on my words an immortal charm.

There is nothing that exists so great or marvelous that over time mankind does not admire it less and less.

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.

What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others

Religious questions have often led to wicked and impious actions.

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

Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?

Never trust the calm sea when she shows her false alluring smile.

The sum of all sums is eternity.

Such crimes has superstition caused.

A falling drop at last will carve a stone.

Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.

[N]ature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death.

The mind like a sick body can be healed and changed by medicine.

How is it that the sky feeds the stars?

Human life lay foul before men's eyes, crushed to the dust beneath religion's weight.

The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.

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.

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

Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself.

The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.

Tis pleasant to stand on shore and watch others labouring in a stormy sea.

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

Too often in time past, religion has brought forth criminal and shameful actions ... How many evils has religion caused?

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

Falling drops will at last wear away stone.

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

How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings.
[Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!]

Out beyond our world there are, elsewhere, other assemblages of matter making other worlds. Ours is not the only one in air's embrace.

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

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.

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

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

These [the senses] we trust, first, last, and always.

It is pleasant, when the sea is high and the winds are dashing the waves about, to watch from the shores the struggles of another.

From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers.

What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth.

Death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

In a brief space the generations of beings are changed, and, like runners, pass on the torches of life.

Gently touching with the charm of poetry.

Only religion can lead to such evil.

Tears for the mourners who are left behind
Peace everlasting for the quiet dead.

The body searches for that which has injured the mind with love.

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.

Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.

There is no place in nature for extinction.

Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them.

It is pleasurable, when winds disturb the waves of a great sea, to gaze out from land upon the great trials of another.

We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays.

The mask is torn off, while the reality remains