Lucretius Quotes

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers. ~ Lucretius

From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

Thus, then, the All that is is limited
In no one region of its onward paths,
For then 'tmust have forever its beyond. ~ Lucretius

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas ~ Lucretius

Out beyond our world there are, elsewhere, other assemblages of matter making other worlds. Ours is not the only one in air's embrace. ~ Lucretius

From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

Life is one long struggle in the dark. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do.
Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscripts: "N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished." He kept his word with himself that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid he would have lived longer. ~ Voltaire

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. ~ Lucretius

All rebel thought, as we
have seen, is expressed either in rhetoric or in a closed universe. The rhetoric of ramparts in Lucretius, the
convents and isolated castles of Sade, the island or the lonely rock of the romantics, the solitary heights of
Nietzsche, the primeval seas of Lautreamont, the parapets of Rimbaud, the terrifying castles of the
surrealists, which spring up in a storm of flowers, the prison, the nation behind barbed wire, the
concentration camps, the empire of free slaves, all illustrate, after their own fashion, the same need for
coherence and unity. In these sealed worlds, man can reign and have knowledge at last. ~ Albert Camus

We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

And since the mind is of a man one part,
Which in one fixed place remains, like ears,
And eyes, and every sense which pilots life;
And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,
Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,
But in the least of time is left to rot,
Thus mind alone can never be, without
The body and the man himself, which seems,
As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught
Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined:
Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds. ~ Lucretius

First, then, I say, that the mind, which we often call the intellect, in which is placed the conduct and government of life, is not less an integral part of man himself, than the hand, and foot, and eyes, are portions of the whole animal. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

Such crimes has superstition caused. ~ Lucretius

Beauty and strength were, both of them, much esteemed; Then wealth was discovered and soon after gold Which quickly became more honoured than strength or beauty. For men, however strong or beautiful, Generally follow the train of a richer man. ~ Lucretius

And many kinds of creatures must have died,
Unable to plant out new sprouts of life.
For whatever you see that lives and breathes and thrives
Has been, from the very beginning, guarded, saved
By it's trickery for its swiftness or brute strength.
And many have been entrusted to our care,
Commended by their usefulness to us.
For instance, strength supports a savage lion;
Foxes rely on their cunning; deer their flight. ~ Lucretius

It's easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net. ~ Lucretius

Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared. ~ Lucretius

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death. ~ Lucretius

Not only was the theory of evolution not invented by Darwin himself; it wasn't invented by his Enlightenment predecessors either. It was invented by Epicurus (looking back to Democritus and others) and popularized by Lucretius. It wasn't and isn't a new, modern discovery. It is simply one part of one ancient worldview. ~ N. T. Wright

Lucretius wants to write the poem of matter, but he warns us from the start that the reality of matter is that it's made of invisible particles. He ~ Italo Calvino

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

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false? ~ Lucretius

Truths kindle light for truths. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

Human life lay foul before men's eyes, crushed to the dust beneath religion's weight. ~ Lucretius

Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods. ~ Lucretius

Thus the sum of things is ever being reviewed, and mortals dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life. ~ Lucretius

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers. ~ Lucretius

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

In a brief space the generations of beings are changed, and, like runners, pass on the torches of life. ~ Lucretius

Men conceal the past scenes of their lives. ~ Lucretius

To truly take the measure of a man, you must observe him in the midst of trial and tribulation-then, from the bottom of their hearts, men say what they believe; the mask is torn away, and what remains cannot deceive. ~ Lucretius

What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth. ~ Lucretius

Once commonly called "atomism," the genealogy of atheism can be traced all the way back through the Enlightenment to Roman poets such as Lucretius and his poem De Rerum Natura, and behind that to Greek philosophers such as Epicurus and Democritus and their philosophy of atomism. It was precisely such a philosophy that contributed to the classical world a strong sense of fate and the futility of both life and human purpose. And it also provided the dark setting against which the brilliance of the hope of the good news of Jesus shone by contrast - as soon it will once again. ~ Os Guinness

Lucretius and Cicero testify to the view that people dream about the things that concern them in waking life. ~ Sigmund Freud

So-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time. I have called this mental defect the Lucretius problem, after the Latin poetic philosopher who wrote that the fool believes that the tallest mountain in the world will be equal to the tallest one he has observed. ~ Anonymous

I return to the newborn world, and the soft-soil fields, What their first birthing lifted to the shores Of light, and trusted to the wayward winds. First the Earth gave the shimmer of greenery And grasses to deck the hills; then over the meadows The flowering fields are bright with the color of springtime, And for all the trees that shoot into the air. ~ Lucretius

Human beings, Lucretius thought, must not drink in the poisonous belief that their souls are only part of the world temporarily and they are heading somewhere else. That belief will only spawn in them a destructive relation to the environment in which they live the only lives they have. ~ Stephen Greenblatt

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? ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

Religious questions have often led to wicked and impious actions. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilisation. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others. ~ Bertrand Russell

Again we are all sprung from the same seed, all have the same father, by whom mother earth the giver of increase, when she has taken in from him the liquid drops of moisture, conceives and bears goodly crops and joyous trees and the race of man, bears all kinds of brute beasts, in that she supplies food with which all feed their bodies and lead a pleasant life and continue their race; wherefore with good cause she has gotten the name of mother. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

Such evil deeds could religion prompt. ~ Lucretius

We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body. ~ Lucretius

Sweet it is, when on the high seas the winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the land on another's struggles. ~ Lucretius

For men know not what the nature of the soul is; whether it is engendered with us, or whether, on the contrary, it is infused into us at our birth, whether it perishes with us, dissolved by death, or whether it haunts the gloomy shades and vast pools of Orcus. ~ Lucretius

How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings.
[Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!] ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

The mind like a sick body can be healed and changed by medicine. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

On the other side of anger at those who either peddled false visions of security or incited irrational fears of death, Lucretius offered a feeling of liberation and the power to stare down what had once seemed so menacing. What human beings can and should do, he wrote, is to conquer their fears, accept the fact that they themselves and all the things they encounter are transitory, and embrace the beauty and the pleasure of ~ Stephen Greenblatt

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began. ~ Lucretius

It is a pleasure for to sit at ease Upon the land, and safely for to see How other folks are tossed on the seas That with the blustering winds turmoiled be. ~ Lucretius

So much wrong could religion induce. ~ Lucretius

The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye. ~ Lucretius

Atomism was viciously persecuted as heresy throughout the early Christian era, and only one printed manuscript of De Rerum Naturum survived the flames. There are several translations; I have chosen the one translated by my fellow Devonian and Oxonian, W. Hannaford Brown. Brown's own manuscript was almost destroyed during the Nazi bombardment of England in 1943: if a religious book had survived so many vicissitudes we can easily imagine what the faithful would say. But Lucretius teaches us to live without such piffle. ~ Christopher Hitchens

In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world. The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. Mary no longer loves the contemplative life and Martha no longer loves the active life, Leah is sterile, Rachel has a carnal eye, Cato visits brothels, Lucretius becomes a woman. Everything is on the wrong path. In those days, thank God, I acquired from my master the desire to learn and a sense of the straight way, which remains even when the path is tortuous. ~ Umberto Eco

Nature impelled men to make sounds with their tongues And they found it useful to give names to things Much for the same reason that we see children now Have recourse to gestures because they cannot speak And point their fingers at things which appear before them. ~ Lucretius

Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is. ~ Lucretius

Tis pleasant to stand on shore and watch others labouring in a stormy sea. ~ Lucretius

Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated. ~ Lucretius

Even if I knew nothing of the atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phenomena themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections. ~ Lucretius

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

Charlotte came in herself, like a big bridal edifice in her veil and other lace, carrying long-stemmed flowers. With her there wasn't much hiding of the behind-the-scenes of life to keep a man in the bonds of love, as Lucretius advises when he tells you to make allowances for mortality. You only had to see her practical mouth to know everything about mortality was admitted in advance, though she did for form's sake all that other women do. Her frankness gave her a kind of nobility. ~ Saul Bellow

Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself. ~ Lucretius

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds. ~ Lucretius

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

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear. ~ Lucretius

The gods and their tranquil abodes appear, which no winds disturb, nor clouds bedew with showers, nor does the white snow, hardened by frost, annoy them; the heaven, always pure, is without clouds, and smiles with pleasant light diffused.
[Lat., Apparet divom numen, sedesque quietae;
Quas neque concutiunt ventei, nec nubila nimbeis.
Aspergunt, neque nex acri concreta pruina
Cana cadens violat; semper sine nubibus aether
Integer, et large diffuso lumine ridet.] ~ Lucretius

Another fallacy comes creeping in whose errors you should be meticulous in trying to avoid. Don't think our eyes, our bright and shining eyes, were made for us to look ahead with. Don't suppose our thigh bones fitted our shin bones and our shins our ankles so that we might take steps. Don't think that arms dangled from shoulders and branched out in hands with fingers at their ends, both right and left, for us to do whatever need required for our survival. All such argument, all such interpretation is perverse, fallacious, puts the cart before the horse. No bodily thing was born for us to use. Nature had no such aim, but what was born creates the use. There could be no such thing as sight before the eyes were formed. No speech before the tongue was made, but tongues began long before speech were uttered. and the ears were fashioned long before a sound was heard. And all the organs I feel sure, were there before their use developed. They could not evolve for the sake of use be so designed. But battling hand to hand and slashing limbs, fouling the foe in blood, these antedate the flight of shining javelins. Nature taught men out to dodge a wound before they learned the fit of shield to arm. Rest certainly is older in the history of man than coverlets or mattresses, and thirst was quenched before the days of cups or goblets. Need has created use as man contrives device for his comfort. but all these cunning inventions are far different from all those things much older, which supp ~ Lucretius

Never trust the calm sea when she shows her false alluring smile. ~ Lucretius

...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! ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

[N]ature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

There is so much wrong with the world. (tanta stat praedita culpa) ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

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

Whenever anything changes and quits its proper limits, this change is at once the death of that which was before. ~ Lucretius

I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been, as Lucretius observes. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them. ~ Lucretius

Those things that are in the light we behold from darkness. ~ Lucretius

For piety lies not in being often seen turning a veiled head to stones, nor in approaching every altar, nor in lying prostratebefore the temples of the gods, nor in sprinkling altars with the blood of beastsbut rather in being able to look upon all things with a mind at peace. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

When human life lay foul for all to see
Upon the earth, crushed by the burden of religion,
Religion which from heaven's firmament
Displayed its face, its ghastly countenance,
Lowering above mankind, the first who dared
Raise mortal eyes against it, first to take
His stand against it, was a man of Greece.
He was not cowed by fables of the gods
Or thunderbolts or heaven's threatening roar,
But they the more spurred on his ardent soul
Yearning to be the first to break apart
The bolts of nature's gates and throw them open.
Therefore his lively intellect prevailed
And forth he marched, advancing onwards far
Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world,
And voyaged in mind throughout infinity,
Whence he victorious back in triumph brings
Report of what can be and what cannot
And in what manner each thing has a power
That's limited, and deep-set boundary stone.
Wherefore religion in its turn is cast
Beneath the feet of men and trampled down,
And us his victory has made peers of heaven. ~ Lucretius

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. ~ Lucretius

Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present. They have been accustomed to move and to meet in all manner of ways. For this reason, it came to pass that being spread abroad through a vast time and trying every sort of combination and motion, at length those come together that produce great things, like earth and sea and sky and the generation of living creatures. ~ Lucretius

To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease. ~ Lucretius

O goddess, bestow on my words an immortal charm. ~ Lucretius

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? ~ Lucretius

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