So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.
LUCRETIUSTrue piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.
More Lucretius Quotes
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What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth.
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Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.
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You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely.
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If the matter of death is reduced to sleep and rest, what can there be so bitter in it, that any one should pine in eternal grief for the decease of a friend?
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The sum of all sums is eternity.
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Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.
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Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.
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For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.
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The first-beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.
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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.
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Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.
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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.
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If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy that even he can’t lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist.
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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.
LUCRETIUS -
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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Continual dropping wears away a stone.
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There is so much wrong with the world.
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Only religion can lead to such evil.
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Fear is the mother of all gods … Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.
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All life is a struggle in the dark.
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To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.
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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.
LUCRETIUS -
O goddess, bestow on my words an immortal charm.
LUCRETIUS -
It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.
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In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.
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Truths kindle light for truths.
LUCRETIUS