Lucretius famous quotes

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
-- Lucretius

#Inspirational #Stones #Dripping

Nothing can be created out of nothing.
-- Lucretius

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

#Atheist #Sublime #Ignorant

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

#Wisdom #Determination #Rain

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

#Food #Men #Poison

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

#Rainy Day #Mind #Want

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

#Air #Void #Bears

So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.
-- Lucretius

#Heart #Adversity #Reality

At this stage you must admit that whatever is seen to be sentient is nevertheless composed of atoms that are insentient. The phenomena open to our observation so not contradict this conclusion or conflict with it. Rather they lead us by the hand and compel us to believe that the animate is born, as I maintain, of the insentient.
-- Lucretius

#Believe #Hands #Atoms

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

#Water #Stones #Force

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

#Men #Wickedness #Height

Truths kindle light for truths.
-- Lucretius

#Light #Kindles

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

#Mother #Atheism #Doe

Life is one long struggle in the dark.
-- Lucretius

#Life #Struggle #Dark

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.
-- Lucretius

#Evil #Deeds

Only religion can lead to such evil.
-- Lucretius

#Evil #Religion

Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well Rest, rest, There is no God, no gods who dwell Crowned with avenging righteousness on high Nor frowning ministers of their hate in hell.
-- Lucretius

#Brother #Hate #Atheism

Vineyards and shining harvests, pastures, arbors, And all this our very utmost toil Can hardly care for, we wear down our strength Whether in oxen or in men, we dull The edges of our ploughshares, and in return Our fields turn mean and stingy, underfed, And so today the farmer shakes his head, More and more often sighing that his work, The labour of his hands, has come to naught.
-- Lucretius

#Work #Mean #Men

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.
-- Lucretius

#Spring #Order #Work Out

All life is a struggle in the dark.
-- Lucretius

#Struggle #Dark #Life Is

Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.
-- Lucretius

#Elements #Return #Nothingness

For piety lies not in being often seen turning a veiled head to stones, nor in approaching every altar, nor in lying prostratebefore the temples of the gods, nor in sprinkling altars with the blood of beastsbut rather in being able to look upon all things with a mind at peace.
-- Lucretius

#Lying #Blood #Mind

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

#Truth #Knowledge #Giving

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

#Life #Fate #Vain

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.
-- Lucretius

#Matter #Nothingness

The mask is torn off, while the reality remains
-- Lucretius

#Reality #Mask #Torn

It is a pleasure for to sit at ease Upon the land, and safely for to see How other folks are tossed on the seas That with the blustering winds turmoiled be.
-- Lucretius

#Ocean #Wind #Sea

The sum total of all sums total is eternal.
-- Lucretius

#Eternity

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

#Doe #Admire #Mankind

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

#Earth #Sprung

Anything made out of destructible matter Infinite time would have devoured before. But if the atoms that make and replenish the world Have endured through the immense span of the past Their natures are immortal-that is clear. Never can things revert to nothingness!
-- Lucretius

#Science #Past #Atoms

If atom stocks are inexhaustible, Greater than power of living things to count, If Nature's same creative power were present too To throw the atoms into unions - exactly as united now, Why then confess you must That other worlds exist in other regions of the sky, And different tribes of men, kinds of wild beasts.
-- Lucretius

#Moon #Men #Sky

Nothing comes from nothing.
-- Lucretius

#Cause And Effect

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

#Death #Generations #May

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.
-- Lucretius

#Struggle #Wind #Sea

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; for never is there any lack of a little.
-- Lucretius

#Men #Order #Mind

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.
-- Lucretius

#Power #Haste #Levels

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

#Envy #Levels #Thunderbolts

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

#Violence #Mesh #Recoil

A falling drop at last will carve a stone.
-- Lucretius

#Fall #Stones #Lasts

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

#Food #Science #Poison

(On the temperature of water in wells) The reason why the water in wells becomes colder in summer is that the earth is then rarefied by the heat, and releases into the air all the heat-particles it happens to have. So, the more the earth is drained of heat, the colder becomes the moisture that is concealed in the ground. On the other hand, when all the earth condenses and contracts and congeals with the cold, then, of course, as it contracts, it squeezes out into the wells whatever heat it holds.
-- Lucretius

#Summer #Air #Hands

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

#Strength #Mind #Decay

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

#Light #Darkness #Atheism

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

#Atheism #Life Is #Given

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

#Evil #Religion

Nay, the greatest wits and poets, too, cease to live; Homer, their prince, sleeps now in the same forgotten sleep as do the others. [Lat., Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum; Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus Sceptra potitus, eadem aliis sopitu quiete est.]
-- Lucretius

#Death #Sleep #Forgotten

It is doubtful what fortune to-morrow will bring. [Lat., Posteraque in dubio est fortunam quam vehat aetas.]
-- Lucretius

#Morrow #Fortune #Doubtful

The gods and their tranquil abodes appear, which no winds disturb, nor clouds bedew with showers, nor does the white snow, hardened by frost, annoy them; the heaven, always pure, is without clouds, and smiles with pleasant light diffused. [Lat., Apparet divom numen, sedesque quietae; Quas neque concutiunt ventei, nec nubila nimbeis. Aspergunt, neque nex acri concreta pruina Cana cadens violat; semper sine nubibus aether Integer, et large diffuso lumine ridet.]
-- Lucretius

#Clouds #Light #Wind

All things obey fixed laws.
-- Lucretius

#Law #Fixed

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

#Men #Understanding #Mind

Religious questions have often led to wicked and impious actions.
-- Lucretius

#Religious #Wicked #Action

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

#Sea #Watches #Shore

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

#Adversity #Men #Doubt

The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.
-- Lucretius

#Newborn #Wailing #Infant

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.
-- Lucretius

#Men #Long #Atheism

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

#Eye #Men #Dust

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

#Lasts #Firsts

Nature impelled men to make sounds with their tongues And they found it useful to give names to things Much for the same reason that we see children now Have recourse to gestures because they cannot speak And point their fingers at things which appear before them.
-- Lucretius

#Children #Men #Names

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

#Past #Evil #Atheism

No fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. Equally, there is nothing so mighty or so marvelous that the wonder it evokes does not tend to diminish in time.
-- Lucretius

#Believe #Simple #Doubt

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

#Stars #Light #Atheism

Thus the sum of things is ever being reviewed, and mortals dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.
-- Lucretius

#Space #Torches #Generations

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

#Lying #Mind #Atheism

If anyone decided to call the sea Neptune, and corn Ceres, and to misapply the name of Bacchus rather than to give liquor its right name, so be it; and let him dub the round world "Mother of the Gods" so long as he is careful not really to infest his mind with base superstitions.
-- Lucretius

#Mother #Sea #Names

When the supreme violence of a furious wind upon the sea sweeps over the waters the chief admiral of a fleet along with his mighty legions, does he not crave the gods' peace with vows and in his panic seek with prayers the peace of the winds and favouring breezes. Nonetheless, he is caught up in the furious hurricane and driven upon the shoals of death.
-- Lucretius

#Prayer #Wind #Sea

Assuredly whatsoever things are fabled to exist in deep Acheron, these all exist in this life. There is no wretched Tantalus, fearing the great rock that hangs over him in the air and frozen with vain terror. Rather, it is in this life that fear of the gods oppresses mortals without cause, and the rock they fear is any that chance may bring.
-- Lucretius

#Rocks #Air #Atheism

Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present.
-- Lucretius

#Blow #Order #Design

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

#Medicine #Sick #Mind

Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present. They have been accustomed to move and to meet in all manner of ways. For this reason, it came to pass that being spread abroad through a vast time and trying every sort of combination and motion, at length those come together that produce great things, like earth and sea and sky and the generation of living creatures.
-- Lucretius

#Moving #Blow #Order

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

#New Beginnings #Eye #Firsts

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

#Encounters #Warfare #Pleasure

Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation; not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.
-- Lucretius

#Men #Wind #Sea

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

#Space #Grandparent #Torches

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

#Sweet #Flower #Earth

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.
-- Lucretius

#Latin #Evil #Deeds

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

#Soul #Mind #Wealth

Such crimes has superstition caused.
-- Lucretius

#Superstitions #Crime

The sum of all sums is eternity.
-- Lucretius

#Eternity

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.
-- Lucretius

#Time #Names #Degrees

Gently touching with the charm of poetry.
-- Lucretius

#Poetry #Touching #Charm