On the Nature of Things
Lucretius
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.”
“...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!”
“Trees don't live in the sky, and clouds don't swim In 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 grows Submits to limit and restrictions.”
“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.”
“You see that stones are worn away by time, Rocks rot, and twoers topple, even the shrines And images of the gods grow very tired, Develop crack or wrinkles, their holy wills Unable to extend their fated term, To litigate against the Laws of Nature. And don't we see the monuments of men Collapse, as if to ask us, "Are not we As frail as those whom we commemorate?"? Boulders come plunging down from the mountain heights, Poor weaklings with no power to resist The thrust that says to them, Your time has come! But they would be rooted in steadfastness Had they endured from time beyond all time, As far back as infinity. Look about you! Whatever it is that holds in its embrace All earth, if it projects, as some men say, All things out of itself, and takes them back When they have perished, must itself consist Of mortal elements. The parts must add Up to the sum. Whatever gives away Must lose in the procedure, and gain again Whenever it takes back.”
“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?”
“Matter's basic elements are solid, Completely so, and that they fly through time Invincible, indestructible for ever.”
“And in declaring true every theory that does not contravene the evidence of the senses, Epicurus does not blink the fact that the philosopher may arrive at more than one explanation for a given phenomenon—in some cases, even at explanations that are mutually exclusive or contradictory.”
“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.”
“For whatever changes and leaves its natural bounds is instant death of that which was before.”
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Book Keywords:
atoms, wind, air, nature, death, classics, latin, lucretius, spirit, universe, philosophy, wealth, mind
