Titus Lucretius Carus Quotes

Nothing can dwindle to nothing, as Nature restores one thing from the stuff of another, nor does she allow a birth, without a corresponding death.

If the world is the product of nothing but natural forces and natural law, divine intervention is impossible.

Humanity, at any rate, does have free will, and in a most ingenious way Epicurus derived free will from the doctrine of the swerve of the atom, saying in effect that the power to make a deliberate choice of action was inherent in the atom itself, which demonstrated that power by unaccountably swerving from its "normal" path.

So far as it goes, a small thing may give analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.

Continual dropping wears away a stone.

Words pass through walls and slip past lock and key,
and numbing cold seeps to our very bones.

To fear death, then, is foolish, since death is the final and complete annihilation of personal identity, the ultimate release from anxiety and pain.

Your life is death already, though you live
And though you see, except that half your time
You waste in sleep, and the other half you snore
With eyes wide open, forever seeing dreams,
Forever in panic, forever lacking wit
To find out what the trouble is, depressed,
Or drunk, or drifting aimlessly around.

To begin, this thing he calls "homoeomeria" - take bones: you see, they're made of little bones, 835 wee, tiny ones; and from wee, tiny guts, guts are created; and blood comes into being when lots of little drops of blood foregather.

Matter's basic elements are solid,
Completely so, and that they fly through time
Invincible, indestructible for ever.

The atoms in it must be used over and over again; thus the death of one thing becomes necessary for the birth of another.

...nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power. O minds of mortals, blighted by your blindness! Amid what deep darkness and daunting dangers life's little day is passed! To think that you should fail to see that nature importantly demands only that the body may be rid of pain, and that the mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment!

Though you outlive as many generations as you will,
Nevertheless, Eternal Death is waiting for you still.
It is no shorter, that eternity that lies in store
For the man who with the setting sun today will rise no more,
Than for the man whose sun has set months, even years, before.

There can be no centre
in infinity.

And in declaring true every theory that does not contravene the evidence of the senses, Epicurus does not blink the fact that the philosopher may arrive at more than one explanation for a given phenomenon - in some cases, even at explanations that are mutually exclusive or contradictory.

Burning fevers flee no swifter from your body if you toss under figured counterpanes and coverlets of crimson than if you must lie in rude homespun.

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern
That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?
Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?
For if thy life aforetime and behind
To thee was grateful, and not all thy good
Was heaped as in sieve to flow away
And perish unavailingly, why not,
Even like a banqueter, depart the hall,
Laden with life?

Truths kindle light for truths.

For whatever changes and leaves its natural bounds
is instant death of that which was before.