Lucretius > Quotes

“All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura

“A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.”
― 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

“Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.”
― Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

“Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. (To such heights of evil are men driven by religion.)”
― Lucretius, The Way Things Are

“Constant dripping hollows out a stone.”
― Lucretius

“It's easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net whose cords and knots are strong; but even so, enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.”
― Lucretius, The Way Things Are

“There can be no centre
in infinity.”
― Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe

“Watch a man in times of adversity to discover 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.”
― Lucretius, Of The Nature of Things

“Nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death.”
― Lucretius

“Man's greatest wealth is to live on a little with contented mind; for little is never lacking.”
― Lucretius

“There is nothing that exists so great or marvelous that over time mankind does not admire it less and less.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things

“For fools admire and love those things they see hidden in verses turned all upside down, and take for truth what sweetly strokes the ears and comes with sound of phrases fine imbued.”
― Lucretius, The Nature of Things

“...nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power. O minds of mortals, blighted by your blindness! Amid what deep darkness and daunting dangers life’s little day is passed! To think that you should fail to see that nature importantly demands only that the body may be rid of pain, and that the mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment!”
― Lucretius, On the Nature of things

“Nothing can dwindle to nothing, as Nature restores one thing from the stuff of another, nor does she allow a birth, without a corresponding death.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, The Way Things Are

“Trees don't live in the sky, and clouds don't swim
In the salt seas, and fish don't leap in wheatfields,
Blood isn't found in wood, nor sap in rocks.
By fixed arrangement, all that live and grows
Submits to limit and restrictions.”
― Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

“All things keep on in everlasting motion,
Out of the infinite come the particles,
Speeding above, below, in endless dance.”
― Lucretius

“To fear death, then, is foolish, since death is the final and complete annihilation of personal identity, the ultimate release from anxiety and pain.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things

“Another fallacy comes creeping in whose errors you should be meticulous in trying to avoid. Don't think our eyes, our bright and shining eyes, were made for us to look ahead with. Don't suppose our thigh bones fitted our shin bones and our shins our ankles so that we might take steps. Don't think that arms dangled from shoulders and branched out in hands with fingers at their ends, both right and left, for us to do whatever need required for our survival. All such argument, all such interpretation is perverse, fallacious, puts the cart before the horse. No bodily thing was born for us to use. Nature had no such aim, but what was born creates the use. There could be no such thing as sight before the eyes were formed. No speech before the tongue was made, but tongues began long before speech were uttered. and the ears were fashioned long before a sound was heard. And all the organs I feel sure, were there before their use developed. They could not evolve for the sake of use be so designed. But battling hand to hand and slashing limbs, fouling the foe in blood, these antedate the flight of shining javelins. Nature taught men out to dodge a wound before they learned the fit of shield to arm. Rest certainly is older in the history of man than coverlets or mattresses, and thirst was quenched before the days of cups or goblets. Need has created use as man contrives device for his comfort. but all these cunning inventions are far different from all those things much older, which supply their function from their form. The limbs, the sense, came first, their usage afterwards. Never think they could have been created for the sake of being used.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, The Way Things Are

“نلاحظ أنّ متطلّبات ��بيعتنا الجسدية قليلةٌ فعلًا، وهي لا تزيد عن ما هو لازم لتبديد الألم، وكذلك لإبعاد الكثير من الملذات عنا. لا تسعى الطبيعة عادةً إلى شيءٍ أكثر إشباعاً، أو تتذمّر إنْ لم يكن ثمة صور ذهبيّة للشبّان قرب المنزل وهم يحملون مصابيح متألقة في أيديهم اليمنى لإضاءة الولائم التي تجري طوال الليل. ما الذي سيختلف لو لم تبرق الكرة بأضواء فضيّة برّاقة إلى جانب الذهبيّة، أو يكن ثمة عوارض منقوشة ومطليّة تهتز بفعل موسيقى آلة اللوت؟ لن تُضيّع الطبيعة هذه المباهج لو استلقى الناس مع رفاقهم على العشب الرطب قرب جدولٍ يجري تحت أغصان شجرة عالية، فيُنعشون أجسادهم بلذائذ ذات تكلفة ضئيلة. وستزداد روعة الأمر لو كان الطقس مبتسماً لهم، وصار ثوب العشب مرقّطاً بالأزهار.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus

“The supply of matter in the universe was never more tightly packed than it is now, or more widely spread out. For nothing is ever added to it or subtracted from it. It follows that the movement of atoms today is no different from what it was in bygone ages and always will be. So the things that have regularly come into being will continue to come into being in the same manner; they will be and grow and flourish so far as each is allowed by the laws of nature.”
― Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

“At this stage you must admit that whatever is seen to be sentient is nevertheless composed of atoms that are insentient. The phenomena open to our observation do not contradict this conclusion or conflict with it. Rather they lead us by the hand and compel us to believe that the animate is born, as I maintain, of the insentient”
― 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

“What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth.”
― Lucretius, de Rerum Natura, the Nature of Things: A Poetic Translation

“Defining philosophy as “an activity, attempting by means of discussion and reasoning, to make life happy,” he believed that happiness is gained through the achievement of moral self-sufficiency (autarkeia) and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia). The main obstacles to the goal of tranquillity of mind are our unnecessary fears and desires, and the only way to eliminate these is to study natural science. The most serious disturbances of all are fear of death, including fear of punishment after death, and fear of the gods. Scientific inquiry removes fear of death by showing that the mind and spirit are material and mortal, so that they cannot live on after we die: as Epicurus neatly and logically puts it: “Death…is nothing to us: when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, we do not exist. Consequently it does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the living it is non-existent and the dead no longer exist” (Letter to Menoeceus 125). As for fear of the gods, that disappears when scientific investigation proves that the world was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, that the gods live outside the world and have no inclination or power to intervene in its affairs, and that irregular phenomena such as lightning, thunder, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes have natural causes and are not manifestations of divine anger. Every Epicurean would have agreed with Katisha in the Mikado when she sings: But to him who’s scientific There’s nothing that’s terrific In the falling of a flight of thunderbolts! So the study of natural science is the necessary means whereby the ethical end is attained. And that is its only justification: Epicurus is not interested in scientific knowledge for its own sake, as is clear from his statement that “if we were not disturbed by our suspicions concerning celestial phenomena, and by our fear that death concerns us, and also by our failure to understand the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need of natural science” (Principal Doctrines 11). Lucretius’ attitude is precisely the same as his master’s: all the scientific information in his poem is presented with the aim of removing the disturbances, especially fear of death and fear of the gods, that prevent the attainment of tranquillity of mind. It is very important for the reader of On the Nature of Things to bear this in mind all the time, particularly since the content of the work is predominantly scientific and no systematic exposition of Epicurean ethics is provided.25 Epicurus despised philosophers who do not make it their business to improve people’s moral condition: “Vain is the word of a philosopher by whom no human suffering is cured. For just as medicine is of no use if it fails to banish the diseases of the body, so philosophy is of no use if it fails to banish the suffering of the mind” (Usener fr. 221). It is evident that he would have condemned the majority of modern philosophers and scientists.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things

“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.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus

“There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone ... Mind cannot arise alone without body, or apart from sinews and blood ... You must admit, therefore, that when then body has perished, there is an end also of the spirit diffused through it. It is surely crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal...”
― Titus Lucretius Carus

“Visible objects therefore do not perish utterly, since nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death.”
― Lucretius

“Every person tries to flee himself—yet despite ourselves, we remain attached to this self which we hate.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus

“Furthermore, as the body suffers the horrors of disease and the pangs of pain, so we see the mind stabbed with anguish, grief and fear. What more natural than that it should likewise have a share in death?”
― Lucretius, On the Nature of Things