Lucretius Quotes

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• All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.

  Lucretius

  Atheist, Ignorant, Religion

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• Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

  Lucretius

  Inspirational, Motivational, Encouragement

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• Why shed tears that you must die? For if your past life has been one of enjoyment, and if all your pleasures have not passed through your mind, as through a sieve, and vanished, leaving not a rack behind, why then do you not, like a thankful guest, rise cheerfully from life's feast, and with a quiet mind go take your rest.

  Lucretius

  Death, Past, Leaving

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• Since you must admit that there is nothing outside the universe, it can have no limit and is accordingly without end or measure. It makes no odds in which part of it you may take your stand; whatever spot anyone may occupy, the universe stretches away from him just the same in all directions without limit.

  Lucretius

  Odds, Atheism, May

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• No matter how difficult a task may look.. Persistence and steady action will get you through

  Lucretius

  Encouragement, Persistence, Tasks

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• Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.

  Lucretius

  Earth, Firsts

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• Nothing can be created out of nothing.

  Lucretius

  Preparation, Complexity

  De Rerum Natura bk. 1, l. 155

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• 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

  Moving, Blow, Infinite Time

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• Too often in time past, religion has brought forth criminal and shameful actions... How many evils has religion caused?

  Lucretius

  Past, Evil, Atheism

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• The body searches for that which has injured the mind with love.

  Lucretius

  Discovery, Mind, Body

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• For fools admire and love those things they see hidden in verses turned all upside down, and take for truth what sweetly strokes the ears and comes with sound of phrases fine imbued.

  Lucretius

  And Love, Sound, Phrases

  Lucretius (2008). “On the Nature of the Universe”, p.90, OUP Oxford

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• Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

  Lucretius

  Lying, Grief, Responsibility

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

  Lucretius

  Water, Stones, Force

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• 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

  Beautiful, Strong, Men

  Titus Lucretius Carus, Lucretius, C. H. Sisson (2003). “De Rerum Natura”, p.167, Psychology Press

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• 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

  Heart, Adversity, Reality

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations". Book by John Bartlett, 1855.

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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.
  [Lat., Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante,
  In terras; et, quod missum est ex aetheris oreis,
  Id rursum caeli relatum templa receptant.]

  Lucretius

  Return Back, Heaven, Earth

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• It was certainly not by design that the particles fell into order, they did not work out what they were going to do, but because many of them by many chances struck one another in the course of infinite time and encountered every possible form and movement, that they found at last the disposition they have, and that is how the universe was created.

  Lucretius

  Spring, Order, Infinite Time

  Titus Lucretius Carus, Lucretius, C. H. Sisson (2003). “De Rerum Natura”, p.41, Psychology Press

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• It's easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net whose cords and knots are strong; but even so, enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.

  Lucretius

  Strong, Way, Fool

  Titus Lucretius Carus, Rolfe Humphries (1968). “The Way Things are: The De Rerum Natura of Titus Lucretius Carus”, p.153, Indiana University Press

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• Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.

  Lucretius

  Gratitude, Men, Wind

  "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius, Book II, lines 1 - 4 (tr. Rouse),

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• 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

  Doe, Stones, Heavy

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• The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.

  Lucretius

  Rainy Day, Greatest Wealth, Mind

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• The first-beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.

  Lucretius

  Creativity, New Beginnings, Eye

  "De rerum natura".

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

  Lucretius

  Men, Understanding, Mind

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• For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.

  Lucretius

  Children, Dark, Law

  "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius, Book II, lines 55 - 61 (tr. Rouse),

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• 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.

  Lucretius

  Believe, Hands, Heaven

  Lucretius (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius (Illustrated)”, p.15, Delphi Classics

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