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.
LUCRETIUSFor 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.
More Lucretius Quotes
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The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.
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Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.
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Gently touching with the charm of poetry.
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Yet a little while, and (the happy hour) will be over, nor ever more shall we be able to recall it.
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Religious questions have often led to wicked and impious actions.
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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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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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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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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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Life is one long struggle in the dark.
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The mind like a sick body can be healed and changed by medicine.
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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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Only religion can lead to such evil.
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Such evil deeds could religion prompt.
LUCRETIUS