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.
LUCRETIUSOne Man’s food is another Man’s Poison
More Lucretius Quotes
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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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Those things that are in the light we behold from darkness.
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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.
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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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Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.
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The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.
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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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When bodies spring apart, because the air Somehow condenses, wander they from truth: For then a void is formed, where none before; And, too, a void is filled which was before.
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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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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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There is so much wrong with the world.
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From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers.
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For out of doubt In these affairs ’tis each man’s will itself That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs Incipient motions are diffused.
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Only religion can lead to such evil.
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Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?
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Now come: that thou mayst able be to know That minds and the light souls of all that live Have mortal birth and death, I will go on Verses to build meet for thy rule of life, Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil.
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The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.
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The mind like a sick body can be healed and changed by medicine.
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Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them.
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Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.
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The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure.
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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 sum of all sums is eternity.
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Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?
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So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.
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By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.
LUCRETIUS