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Lucretius -
De rerum natura (56 BC)
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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
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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.
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Nature impelled men to make sounds with their tongues And they found it useful to give names to things Much for the same reason that we see children now Have recourse to gestures because they cannot speak And point their fingers at things which appear before them.
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Perhaps too the sun as he shines aloft with rosy lamp has roundabout him much fire with heats that are not visible, and thus the fire may be marked by no radiance, so that fraught with heat it increases to such a degree the stroke of the rays.
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[The people] were given over in troops to disease and death.
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Mother of Aeneas' race; pleasure of gods and mortals alike.
Of Venus
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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.
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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.
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What is food to one person may be bitter poison to others.
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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.
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And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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From the midst of the fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes them all amongst the flowers.
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Mother of Aeneas and his race, darling of men and gods, nurturing Venus.
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On a dark theme I trace verses full of light, touching all the muses' charm.
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[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.
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The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Lucretius
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Died:
55 BC
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