Titus Lucretius Carus
11 quotes
Biography
"All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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?"
"Constant dripping hollows out a stone."
"this terror then and drakness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature; the warp whose design we shall begin with this first principle, nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power."
"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..."
"fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, because they see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine."
"We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear."
"Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concernThat thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?For if thy life aforetime and behindTo thee was grateful, and not all thy goodWas heaped as in sieve to flow awayAnd perish unavailingly, why not,Even like a banqueter, depart the hall,Laden with life?"