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.
LUCRETIUSIf 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.
More Lucretius Quotes
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All things obey fixed laws.
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It is doubtful what fortune to-morrow will bring.
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Fear is the mother of all gods … Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.
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Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself.
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One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.
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Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.
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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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These the senses we trust, first, last, and always.
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The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.
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So much wrong could religion induce.
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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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Lucretius, who follows [Epicurus] in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual intercourse provided it is divorced from passion.
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Never trust the calm sea when she shows her false alluring smile.
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Thus, then, the All that is is limited In no one region of its onward paths, For then ‘tmust have forever its beyond.
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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.
LUCRETIUS