Home › Authors › Lucretius
Lucretius Quotes
Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99 BC – 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His major work is De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things, which is considered by some to be the greatest masterpiece of Latin verse.
Also known as: Titus Lucretius Carus
Random Lucretius quote
78 quotes
For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight,
What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?
By what law all things were made, how bound they are to abide in it, how impotent to annul the strong statutes of time.
Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?
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.
Our life must once have end; in vain we fly
There is so great a difference and distinction in these things that what is one man's meat is another man's rank poison.
So far as it goes, a small thing may give an analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.
Nay, the greatest wits and poets, too, cease to live;
The flaming ramparts of the world.
A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a mighty stream; and so with other things—a tree, a man—anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater.
Nothing can be produced from nothing.
Nothing can be created out of nothing.
So rolling time changes the seasons of things. What was of value, becomes in turn of no worth.
Custom renders love attractive; for that which is struck by oft-repeated blows however lightly, yet after long course of time is overpowered and gives way. See you not too that drops of water falling on rocks after long course of time scoop a hole through these rocks?
We are all sprung from a heavenly seed.
Cease therefore to be dismayed by the mere novelty and so to reject reason from your mind with loathing: weigh the questions rather with keen judgment and if they seem to you to be true, surrender, or if the thing is false, gird yourself to the encounter.
How many evils has religion caused!
Yes, to seek power that's vain and never granted
And many species of animals must have perished at that time, unable by procreation to forge out the chain of posterity: for whatever you see feeding on the breath of life, either cunning or courage or at least quickness must have guarded and kept that kind from its earliest existence.
Topics Lucretius is quoted on