Lucretius Quotes - Page 3

All things keep on in everlasting motion, Out of the infinite come the particles, Speeding above, below, in endless dance.

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

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

...Nature allows Destruction nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down.

Even if I knew nothing of the atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phenomena themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections.

The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure.

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

One Man's food is another Man's Poison

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

Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?

Only religion can lead to such evil.

It was certainly not by design that the particles fell into order, they did not work out what they were going to do, but because many of them by many chances struck one another in the course of infinite time and encountered every possible form and movement, that they found at last the disposition they have, and that is how the universe was created.

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

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

There is no place in nature for extinction.

Since you must admit that there is nothing outside the universe, it can have no limit and is accordingly without end or measure. It makes no odds in which part of it you may take your stand; whatever spot anyone may occupy, the universe stretches away from him just the same in all directions without limit.

Long time men lay oppress'd with slavish fear Religion's tyranny did domineer ... At length a mighty one of Greece began To assert the natural liberty of man, By senseless terrors and vain fancies let To slavery. Straight the conquered phantoms fled.

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

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

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

Such crimes has superstition caused.

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

All life is a struggle in the dark.

Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other.

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