Lucretius Quote

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!

On the Nature of Things, trans. Anthony M. Esolen (1995), Book 1, lines 232–7