Lucretius

“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.”

“You see that stones are worn away by time,Rocks rot, and twoers topple, even the shrinesAnd images of the gods grow very tired,Develop crack or wrinkles, their holy willsUnable to extend their fated term,To litigate against the Laws of Nature.And don't we see the monuments of menCollapse, as if to ask us, "Are not weAs frail as those whom we commemorate?"?Boulders come plunging down from the mountain heights,Poor weaklings with no power to resistThe thrust that says to them, Your time has come!But they would be rooted in steadfastnessHad they endured from time beyond all time,As far back as infinity. Look about you!Whatever it is that holds in its embraceAll earth, if it projects, as some men say,All things out of itself, and takes them backWhen they have perished, must itself consistOf mortal elements. The parts must addUp to the sum. Whatever gives awayMust lose in the procedure, and gain againWhenever it takes back.”

“Trees don't live in the sky, and clouds don't swimIn 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 growsSubmits to limit and restrictions.”

“Matter's basic elements are solid,Completely so, and that they fly through timeInvincible, indestructible for ever.”

“Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.”

“Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. (To such heights of evil are men driven by religion.)”

“Whenever a thing changes and quits its proper limits, This change is at once the death of that which was before”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Burning fevers flee no swifter from your body if you toss under figured counterpanes and coverlets of crimson than if you must lie in rude homespun.”

“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.”

“...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!”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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”

“...There is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements. ”

“Tantum Religio Potuit Suadere Malorum.”

“hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessestnon radii solis neque lucida tela dieidiscutiant, sed naturae species ratioque.(1.146ff.)Therefore it is necessary that neither the rays of the sun nor the shining spears of Day should shatter this terror and darkness of the mind, but the aspect and reason of nature...”

“A man leaves his great house because he's boredWith 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, becauseIt clings to him the more closely against his will)And hates himself because he is sick in mindAnd does not know the cause of his disease.”