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.
LUCRETIUSEpicurus whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun.
More Lucretius Quotes
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By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.
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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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All things obey fixed laws.
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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.
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Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods.
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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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How many evils has religion caused! [Lat., Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!]
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Lucretius, who follows [Epicurus] in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual intercourse provided it is divorced from passion.
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Meantime, when once we know from nothing still Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly what we seek: those elements From which alone all things created are, And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
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Sweet it is, when on the high seas the winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the land on another’s struggles.
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The body searches for that which has injured the mind with love.
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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.
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Nothing can be created out of nothing.
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Things stand apart so far and differ, that What’s food for one is poison for another.
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The sum total of all sums total is eternal (meaning the universe).
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