Lucretius Quotes

108 Sourced Quotes

A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a mighty stream; and so with other things—a tree, a man—anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater.

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

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

Lucretius
Some races increase, others are reduced, and in a short while the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners relay the torch of life.

Lucretius
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
And part of the soil is called to wash away
In storms and streams shave close and gnaw the rocks.
Besides, whatever the earth feeds and grows
Is restored to earth. And since she surely is
The womb of all things and their common grave,
Earth must dwindle, you see and take on growth again.

Lucretius
Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

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

Lucretius
Never trust her at any time, when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

Lucretius
Things stand apart so far and differ, that
What's food for one is poison for another.

Lucretius
Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortals live 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
O miserable minds of men! O blind hearts! In what darkness of life, in what great dangers ye spend this little span of years!

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

Lucretius
By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

Lucretius
For as with children, when the doctors try
To give them loathsome wormwood, first they smear
Sweet yellow honey on the goblet's rim.

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
The lively power of his mind prevailed, and forth he marched far beyond the flaming walls of the heavens, as he traversed the immeasurable universe in thought and imagination.

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

Lucretius
All things must needs be borne on through the calm void, moving at equal rate with unequal weights.

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

Lucretius
The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind.

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

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

Lucretius
Next in order I will proceed to discuss by what law of nature it comes to pass that iron can be attracted by that stone which the Greeks call the Magnet from the name of its native place, because it has its origin within the bounds of the country of the Magnesians.

Lucretius
The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.

Lucretius
Nay, the greatest wits and poets, too, cease to live; Homer, their prince, sleeps now in the same forgotten sleep as do the others.

Lucretius
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?

Lucretius
When the whole earth rocks under their feet and towns tumble with the shock or doubtfully threaten to fall, what wonder that mortal men abase themselves and make over to the gods in things here on earth high prerogatives and marvelous powers, sufficient to govern all things?

Lucretius
And thus thou canst remark that every act
At bottom exists not of itself, nor is
As body is, nor has like name with void;
But rather of sort more fitly to be called
An accident of body, and of place
Wherein all things go on.

Lucretius
The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt.

Lucretius