Lucretius - De rerum natura (56 BC)

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Mother of Aeneas' race; pleasure of gods and mortals alike.
Of Venus

Lucretius
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
I return to the newborn world, and the soft-soil fields, What their first birthing lifted to the shores Of light, and trusted to the wayward winds. First the Earth gave the shimmer of greenery And grasses to deck the hills; then over the meadows The flowering fields are bright with the color of springtime, And for all the trees that shoot into the air.

Lucretius
What is food to one person may be bitter poison to others.

Lucretius
We can know there is nothing to be feared in death, that one who is not cannot be made unhappy, and that it matters not a scrap whether one might ever have been born at all, when death that is immortal has taken over one's mortal life.

Lucretius
And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

Lucretius
Deprived of pain, and also deprived of danger, able to do what it wants, [Nature] does not need us, nor understands our deserts, and it cannot be angry.

Lucretius
Death therefore is nothing to us nor does it concern us a scrap, seeing that the nature of the spirit we possess is something mortal.

Lucretius
If one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

Lucretius
So the vital strength of his spirit won through, and he made his way far outside the flaming walls of the world and ranged over the measureless whole, both in mind and spirit.
On epicurus

Lucretius
Material objects are of two kinds, atoms and compounds of atoms. The atoms themselves cannot be swamped by any force, for they are preserved indefinitely by their absolute solidity.

Lucretius
That fear of Acheron be sent packing which troubles the life of man from its deepest depths, suffuses all with the blackness of death, and leaves no delight clean and pure.

Lucretius
From the midst of the fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes them all amongst the flowers.

Lucretius
Mother of Aeneas and his race, darling of men and gods, nurturing Venus.

Lucretius
On a dark theme I trace verses full of light, touching all the muses' charm.

Lucretius
[Epicurus] set forth what is the highest good, towards which we all strive, and pointed out the past, whereby along a narrow track we may strain on towards it in a straight course.

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

Lucretius
But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest wealth is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

Lucretius
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 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 day, but by the aspect and law of nature.

Lucretius
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
A tree cannot grow in the sky, nor clouds be in the deep sea, nor fish live in the fields, nor can blood be in sticks nor sap in rocks.

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

Lucretius