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
drops falling hole rain violence
The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by often falling
return-back heaven earth
What came from the earth returns back to the earth, and the spirit that was sent from heaven, again carried back, is received into the temple of heaven. [Lat., Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante, In terras; et, quod missum est ex aetheris oreis, Id rursum caeli relatum templa receptant.]
atheist ignorant sublime
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
spring order infinite-time
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.
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.
blow order should-have
Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present.
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.
stones doe heavy
If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist.
science past infinite-time
Anything made out of destructible matter Infinite time would have devoured before. But if the atoms that make and replenish the world Have endured through the immense span of the past Their natures are immortal-that is clear. Never can things revert to nothingness!
rainy-day greatest-wealth mind
The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.
blow cells inward
...Nature allows Destruction nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down.
unions germs body
Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.
spring world matter
The sum of things there is no power can change, For naught exists outside, to which can flee Out of the world matter of any kind, Nor forth from which a fresh supply can spring, Break in upon the founded world, and change Whole nature of things, and turn their motions about.
prayer wind sea
When the supreme violence of a furious wind upon the sea sweeps over the waters the chief admiral of a fleet along with his mighty legions, does he not crave the gods' peace with vows and in his panic seek with prayers the peace of the winds and favouring breezes. Nonetheless, he is caught up in the furious hurricane and driven upon the shoals of death.