The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.
For it is unknown what is the real nature of the soul, whether it be born with the bodily frame or be infused at the moment of birth, whether it perishes along with us, when death separates the soul and body, or whether it visits the shades of Pluto and bottomless pits, or enters by divine appointment into other animals.
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?
Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
It is doubtful what fortune to-morrow will bring. [Lat., Posteraque in dubio est fortunam quam vehat aetas.]
Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas
How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings. [Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!]
How many evils have flowed from religion.
Fear is the mother of all gods.
So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.
These [the senses] we trust, first, last, and always.
Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.
Nature obliges everything to change about. One thing crumbles and falls in the weakness of age; Another grows in its place from a negligible start. So time alters the whole nature of the world And earth passes from one state to another.
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.
Fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, becasue thay see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine. for these reasons when we shall have seen that nothing can be produced from nothing, we shall then more correctly ascertain that which we are seeking, both the elements out of which every thing can be produced and the manner in which every thing can be produced in which all things are done without the hands of the gods.
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.
Nay, the greatest wits and poets, too, cease to live; Homer, their prince, sleeps now in the same forgotten sleep as do the others. [Lat., Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum; Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus Sceptra potitus, eadem aliis sopitu quiete est.]
Long time men lay oppress'd with slavish fear Religion's tyranny did domineer ... At length a mighty one of Greece began To assert the natural liberty of man, By senseless terrors and vain fancies let To slavery. Straight the conquered phantoms fled.
If the matter of death is reduced to sleep and rest, what can there be so bitter in it, that any one should pine in eternal grief for the decease of a friend?
Anything made out of destructible matter Infinite time would have devoured before. But if the atoms that make and replenish the world Have endured through the immense span of the past Their natures are immortal-that is clear. Never can things revert to nothingness!
But if anyone were to conduct his life by reason He would find great riches in living a peaceful life And being contented; one is never short of a little But men want always to be powerful and famous So that their fortune rests on a solid foundation And they can spend a placid life in opulence. There isn't a hope of it; to attain great honours You have to struggle along a dangerous way And even when you reach the top there is envy Which can strike you down like lightning into Tartarus. For envy, like lightning, generally strikes at the top Or any point which sticks out from the ordinary level.
Whenever anything changes and quits its proper limits, this change is at once the death of that which was before.
A falling drop at last will carve a stone.
It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the great distress of another.
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.
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