236 Quotes by Lucretius

So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

Nay, the greatest wits and poets, too, cease to live; Homer, their prince, sleeps now in the same forgotten sleep as do the others. [Lat., Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum; Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus Sceptra potitus, eadem aliis sopitu quiete est.]

You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely.

The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure. [Lat., Et metus ille foras praeceps Acheruntis agundus, Funditis humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo, Omnia suffuscans mortis nigrore, neque ullam Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque relinquit.]

Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?

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.

And since the mind is of a man one part, Which in one fixed place remains, like ears, And eyes, and every sense which pilots life; And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart, Severed from us, can neither feel nor be, But in the least of time is left to rot, Thus mind alone can never be, without The body and the man himself, which seems, As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined: Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.