For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.
LUCRETIUSEpicurus whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.
More Lucretius Quotes
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Only religion can lead to such evil.
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From the midst of the very fountain of pleasure, something of bitterness arises to vex us in the flower of enjoyment.
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All life is a struggle in the dark.
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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.
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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.
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We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.
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Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them.
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Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
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The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.
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The sum total of all sums total is eternal.
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All things keep on in everlasting motion, Out of the infinite come the particles, Speeding above, below, in endless dance.
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Continual dropping wears away a stone.
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Lucretius, who follows [Epicurus] in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual intercourse provided it is divorced from passion.
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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.
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Confess then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.
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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.
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You may complete as many generations as you please during your life; none the less will that everlasting death await you.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing can be created out of nothing.
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From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.
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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.
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What came from the earth returns back to the earth, and the spirit that was sent from heaven, again carried back, is received into the temple of heaven.
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O goddess, bestow on my words an immortal charm.
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Yet a little while, and (the happy hour) will be over, nor ever more shall we be able to recall it.
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Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself.
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