“You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely.”

Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.

For fools admire and love those things they see hidden in verses turned all upside down, and take for truth what sweetly strokes the ears and comes with sound of phrases fine imbued.

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.

A falling drop at last will carve a stone.

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.

It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the great distress of another.

So much wrong could religion induce.

The sum total of all sums total is eternal (meaning the universe).

Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.

Truths kindle light for truths.

All life is a struggle in the dark.

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

All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they’re set, and where they’re moved around.

It’s easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net whose cords and knots are strong; but even so, enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.

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.

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.