On Lucretius Quotes

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

Happy he who was able to know the causes of things (felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas), and who trampled beneath his feet all fears, inexorable fate, and the roar of devouring hell. ~ Virgil

But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made
Completely solid, hither and thither fly
Forevermore unconquered through all time,
Now come, and whether to the sum of them
There be a limit or be none, for thee
Let us unfold; likewise what has been found
To be the wide inane, or room, or space
Wherein all things soever do go on,
Let us examine if it finite be
All and entire, or reach unmeasured round
And downward an illimitable profound. ~ Lucretius

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight. ~ Lucretius

The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop. ~ Lucretius

A falling drop at last will carve a stone. ~ Lucretius

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

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

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

Continual dropping wears away a stone. ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

We in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. ~ Lucretius

Nothing appears as it should in a world where nothing is certain. The only certain is the existence of a secret violence that makes everything uncertain. ~ Lucretius

The quintessential emblem of religion - and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core - is the sacrifice of a child by a parent.
Almost all religious faiths incorporate the myth of such a sacrifice, and some have actually made it real. Lucretius had in mind the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father Agamemnon, but he may also have been aware of the Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac and other comparable Near Eastern stories for which the Romans of his times had a growing taste. Writing around 50 BCE he could not, of course, have anticipated the great sacrifice myth that would come to dominate the Western world, but he would not have been surprised by it or by the endlessly reiterated, prominently displayed images of the bloody, murdered son. ~ Stephen Greenblatt

It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the great distress of another. ~ Lucretius

The sum of all sums is eternity. ~ Lucretius

How is it that the sky feeds the stars? ~ Lucretius

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

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

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

In De Rerum Natura, Lucretius pointed out a very central truth concerning the examined life. That is, that the man of science who concerns himself solely with science, who cannot enjoy and be enriched by art, is a misshapen man. An incomplete man. ~ William Styron

Men conceal the past scenes of their lives. ~ 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

Epicurus ... whose genius surpassed all humankind, extinguished the light of others, as the stars are dimmed by the rising sun. ~ Lucretius

Such crimes has superstition caused. ~ Lucretius

Bodies, again,
Are partly primal germs of things, and partly
Unions deriving from the primal germs. ~ Lucretius

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

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

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

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

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

Lucretius poetic, or "everything is infinite randomness, life is awesome, let's get drunk and fuck." I don't need a reason to live, I just need access to booze and sex, and that's motivating enough. However, ~ Peter Welch

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

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

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

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

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others. ~ 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

A property is that which not at all
Can be disjoined and severed from a thing
Without a fatal dissolution: such,
Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow
To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,
Intangibility to the viewless void. ~ 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

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

If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets. ~ 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

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? ~ Lucretius

Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs
Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom springs.
[Lat., Medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat.] ~ Lucretius