Lucretius Quotes

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Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.

Lucretius

Earth, Firsts

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

Lucretius

Encouragement, Persistence, Tasks

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It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.

Lucretius

Greatest Wealth, Soul, Mind

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

Lucretius

Adversity, Men, Doubt

Lucretius (2005). “Sensation and Sex”, p.7, Penguin UK

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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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Life is one long struggle in the dark.

Lucretius

Life, Struggle, Dark

Titus Lucretius Carus (1937). “Lucretius, de rerum natura”

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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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Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

Lucretius

Inspirational, Motivational, Encouragement

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You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely.

Lucretius

Light, Lovely, Without You

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Thus the sum
Forever is replenished, and we live
As mortals by eternal give and take.
The nations wax, the nations wane away;
In a brief space the generations pass,
And like to runners hand the lamp of life
One unto other.

Lucretius

Hands, Space, Giving

Lucretius (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius (Illustrated)”, p.214, Delphi Classics

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

Lucretius

World, States, Whole

Titus Lucretius Carus, Lucretius, C. H. Sisson (2003). “De Rerum Natura”, p.159, Psychology Press

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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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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 old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.

Lucretius

Pits, Way, Ruins

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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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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

Brother, Hate, Atheism

Titus Lucretius Carus (1900). “Lucretius on Life and Death: In the Metre of Omar Khayyam”

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

Lucretius

Mother, Atheist, Atheism

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

Lucretius

Sea, Calm, Never Trust

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

Lucretius

Blow, Mind, Dungeons

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

Lucretius

Life, Given, Lease

De Rerum Natura, bk.3, line 971 (translated by R. E. Latham).

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Born: 99 BC
Died: 55 BC
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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