Lucretius
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Caruswas a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which is usually translated into English as On the Nature of Things...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionPoet
running sea land
It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the great distress of another.
eternity eternal
The sum total of all sums total is eternal.
pits way ruins
The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.
violence mesh recoil
Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin.
water stones force
The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.
air void bears
We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.
men order mind
Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason, a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches; for never is there any lack of a little.
believe hands heaven
Fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, becasue thay 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. for these reasons when we shall have seen that nothing can be produced from nothing, we shall then more correctly ascertain that which we are seeking, both the elements out of which every thing can be produced and the manner in which every thing can be produced in which all things are done without the hands of the gods.
food men may
What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others
summer air hands
(On the temperature of water in wells) The reason why the water in wells becomes colder in summer is that the earth is then rarefied by the heat, and releases into the air all the heat-particles it happens to have. So, the more the earth is drained of heat, the colder becomes the moisture that is concealed in the ground. On the other hand, when all the earth condenses and contracts and congeals with the cold, then, of course, as it contracts, it squeezes out into the wells whatever heat it holds.
wisdom perseverance determination
The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.
evil religion
Only religion can lead to such evil.
children men names
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.
mother atheist atheism
Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.