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.
LUCRETIUSTrue piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.
More Lucretius Quotes
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Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared.
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And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.
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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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Deprived of pain, and also deprived of danger, able to do what it wants, [Nature] does not need us, nor understands our deserts, and it cannot be angry.
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How many evils has religion caused! [Lat., Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!]
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Life is one long struggle in the dark.
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Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.
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Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
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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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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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Under what law each thing was created, and how necessary it is for it to continue under this, and how it cannot annul the strong rules that govern its lifetime.
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Out beyond our world there are, elsewhere, other assemblages of matter making other worlds. Ours is not the only one in air’s embrace.
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All things obey fixed laws.
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We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.
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Those vestiges of natures left behind Which reason cannot quite expel from us Are still so slight that naught prevents a man From living a life even worthy of the gods.
LUCRETIUS