The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.
LUCRETIUSThus 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.
More Lucretius Quotes
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Nature allows Destruction nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down.
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What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth.
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The sum total of all sums total is eternal (meaning the universe).
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Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is.
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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.
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Human life lay foul before men’s eyes, crushed to the dust beneath religion’s weight.
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Tears for the mourners who are left behind Peace everlasting for the quiet dead.
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No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings – the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.
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What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?
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The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.
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Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.
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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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Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.
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Continual dropping wears away a stone.
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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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