“All things keep on in everlasting motion, Out of the infinite come the particles, Speeding above, below, in endless dance.”

The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.

Such crimes has superstition caused.

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.

Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.

Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself.

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

I own with reason: for, if men but knew Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong By some device unconquered to withstand Religions and the menacings of seers.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

If one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

Victory puts us on a level with heaven.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

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.

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.

If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets.

All things obey fixed laws.

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.