Lucretius Quotes

108 Sourced Quotes

We must well grasp the principle of things above, the principle by which the courses of the sun and moon go on, the force by which every thing on earth proceeds.

Lucretius
I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,
And the primordial germs of things unfold,
Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies
And fosters all, and whither she resolves
Each in the end when each is overthrown.
This ultimate stock we have devised to name
Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,
Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.

Lucretius
Oh Science, lift aloud thy voice that stills The pulse of fear, and through the conscience thrills - Thrills through the conscience with the news of peace - How beautiful thy feet are on the hills!

Lucretius
Nor can those motions that bring death prevail
Forever, nor eternally entomb
The welfare of the world; nor, further, can
Those motions that give birth to things and growth
Keep them forever when created there.

Lucretius
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.

Lucretius
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
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
Thus, then, the All that is is limited
In no one region of its onward paths,
For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.

Lucretius
Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

Lucretius
Again, see you not that even stones are conquered by time, that high towers fall and rocks moulder away, that shrines and idols of gods are worn out with decay, and that the holy divinity cannot prolong the bounds of fate or struggle against the fixed laws of nature? In Great Books of the Western World (Volume 12)

Lucretius
This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspects and the law of nature; the warp of whose design we shall begin with this first principle, nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power.

Lucretius
You may complete as many generations as you please during your life; none the less will that everlasting death await you.

Lucretius
But centaurs never existed; there could never be So to speak a double nature in a single body Or a double body composed of incongruous parts With a consequent disparity in the faculties. The stupidest person ought to be convinced of that.

Lucretius
Give your mind now to the true reasoning I have to unfold. A new fact is battling strenuously for access to your ears. A new aspect of the Universe is striving to reveal itself. But no fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation.

Lucretius
I own with reason: for, if men but knew
Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong
By some device unconquered to withstand
Religions and the menacings of seers.

Lucretius
Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason, a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches; for never is there any lack of a little.

Lucretius
If atom stocks are inexhaustible, Greater than power of living things to count, If Nature's same creative power were present too To throw the atoms into unions - exactly as united now, Why then confess you must That other worlds exist in other regions of the sky, And different tribes of men, kinds of wild beasts.

Lucretius
Fear holds dominion over mortality
Only because, seeing in land and sky
So much the cause whereof no wise they know,
Men think Divinities are working there.

Lucretius
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.

Lucretius
Lack of power to solve the question troubles the mind with doubts, whether there was ever a birth-time of the world, and whether likewise there is to be any end...

Lucretius
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
The mind like a sick body can be healed and changed by medicine.

Lucretius
Thus it comes
That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains,
Could bear no produce such as makes us glad,
And whatsoever lives, if shut from food,
Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.

Lucretius
Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.

Lucretius
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.

Lucretius
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
The existing universe is bounded in none of its dimensions; for then it must have an outside.

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

Lucretius
That which was in esteem, falls at length into utter disrepute; and then another thing mounts up and issues out of its degraded state and every day is more and more coveted and blossoms forth high in honour when discovered and is in marvellous repute with men.

Lucretius
For there is a VOID in things; a truth which it will be useful for you, in reference to many points, to know; and which will prevent you from wandering in doubt.

Lucretius