Lucretius Quotes

So rolling time changes the seasons of things. What was of value, becomes in turn of no worth.

Besides we feel that mind to being comes
Along with body, with body grows and ages.
For just as children totter round about
With frames infirm and tender, so there follows
A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then,
Where years have ripened into robust powers,
Counsel is also greater, more increased
The power of mind; thereafter, where already
The body's shattered by master-powers of eld,
And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers,
Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way;
All fails, all's lacking at the selfsame time.
Therefore it suits that even the soul's dissolved,
Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air;
Since we behold the same to being come
Along with body and grow, and, as I've taught,
Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.

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.

Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret.

Caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi.

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet, divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parvo
aequo animo; neque enim est umquam penuria parvi.

Nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus umquam.

Nam cupide conculcatur nimis ante metutum.

Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.

But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

A thing therefore never returns to nothing.

Infidi maris insidis virisque dolumque
ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant
subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti.

Consuetudo concinnat amorem;
nam leviter quamvis quod crebro tunditur ictu,
vincitur in longo spatio tamen atque labascit.
Nonne vides etiam guttas in saxa cadentis
umoris longo in spatio pertundere saxa?

Desine qua propter novitate exterritus ipsa
expuere ex animo rationem, sed magis acri
iudicio perpende, et si tibi vera videntur,
dede manus, aut, si falsum est, accingere contra.