TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS QUOTES
Roman poet & philosopher (c. 99 BC - c. 55. BC)
Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Did men but know that there was a fixed limit to their woes, they would be able, in some measure, to defy the religious fictions and menaces of the poets; but now, since we must fear eternal punishment at death, there is no mode, no means, of resisting them.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Time changes the nature of the whole world;
Everything passes from one state to another
And nothing stays like itself.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Only religion can lead to such evil.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
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
De Rerum Natura
Nothing can be created from nothing.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
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.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Continual dropping wears away a stone.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
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.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
For men know not what the nature of the soul is; whether it is engendered with us, or whether, on the contrary, it is infused into us at our birth, whether it perishes with us, dissolved by death, or whether it haunts the gloomy shades and vast pools of Orcus.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
It's easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
There is nothing that exists so great or marvelous that over time mankind does not admire it less and less.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
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
De Rerum Natura
What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
The race of men at that time in the fields
Was harder, having come from the hard ground.
They were constructed inside of larger bones,
Stronger than ours, and their flesh was entirely sinuous.
It took more than heat or cold to exhaust such men;
They ate whatever offered and were not sick.
Through many repetitions of the sun's course
They followed a wandering life as wild beasts do.
They did not employ their energies at the plough
And did not know the use of iron in agriculture
Nor how to plant sapplings, or lop boughs from old trees.
Whatever the sun and rain gave them they took
And were content with what earth grew on her own.
An oak-tree bearing acorns gave them enough
In the ordinary way, with the berries which you see still
On the arbutus in winter, red when they are ripe,
But larger and more numerous in those days.
The young earth bore a variety of coarse crops,
More than enough for the needs of its wretched inhabitants.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
But centaurs never existed; there could never be
So to speak a double nature in a single body
Or a double body composed of incongruous parts
With a consequent disparity in the faculties.
The stupidest person ought to be convinced of that.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Truths kindle light for truths.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura