110+ Lucretius Quotes On Religion, God And Epic

Lucretius was a Roman poet who lived in the first century BC. He is best known for his philosophical poem "On the Nature of Things," which explores Epicurean philosophy and the nature of the universe. His work had a major influence on later Western philosophy and literature. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Lucretius on religion, god, love.

Top 10 Lucretius Quotes

1. Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
2. The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.
3. Too often in time past, religion has brought forth criminal and shameful actions... How many evils has religion caused?
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.
7. From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.
8. The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.
9. Were a man to order his life by the rules of true reason, a frugal substance joined to a contented mind is for him great riches; for never is there any lack of a little.
10. To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.

Lucretius Short Quotes

• The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.
• Tis pleasant to stand on shore and watch others labouring in a stormy sea.
• The sum of all sums is eternity.
• What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others
• The first-beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.
• There can be no centre in infinity.
• We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.
• O goddess, bestow on my words an immortal charm.
• The sum total of all sums total is eternal.
• Nothing comes from nothing.

Lucretius Quotes About Religion

Long time men lay oppress'd with slavish fear Religion's tyranny did domineer ... At length a mighty one of Greece began To assert the natural liberty of man, By senseless terrors and vain fancies let To slavery. Straight the conquered phantoms fled. — Lucretius

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds. — Lucretius

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion. — Lucretius

Such evil deeds could religion prompt. — Lucretius

Human life lay foul before men's eyes, crushed to the dust beneath religion's weight. — Lucretius

So much wrong could religion induce. — Lucretius

I own with reason: for, if men but knew Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong By some device unconquered to withstand Religions and the menacings of seers. — Lucretius

How many evils have flowed from religion. — Lucretius

How many evils has religion caused! [Lat., Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!] — Lucretius

Lucretius Quotes About God

Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods. — Lucretius

The gods and their tranquil abodes appear, which no winds disturb, nor clouds bedew with showers, nor does the white snow, hardened by frost, annoy them; the heaven, always pure, is without clouds, and smiles with pleasant light diffused. — Lucretius

For piety lies not in being often seen turning a veiled head to stones, nor in approaching every altar, nor in lying prostratebefore the temples of the gods, nor in sprinkling altars with the blood of beastsbut rather in being able to look upon all things with a mind at peace. — Lucretius

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear. — Lucretius

Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well Rest, rest, There is no God, no gods who dwell Crowned with avenging righteousness on high Nor frowning ministers of their hate in hell. — Lucretius

Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them. — Lucretius

If anyone decided to call the sea Neptune, and corn Ceres, and to misapply the name of Bacchus rather than to give liquor its right name, so be it; and let him dub the round world "Mother of the Gods" so long as he is careful not really to infest his mind with base superstitions. — Lucretius

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. — Lucretius

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas — Lucretius

...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods. — Lucretius

Lucretius Quotes About Love

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. — Lucretius

You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely. — Lucretius

Lucretius was passionate, and much more in need of exhortations to prudence than Epicurus was. He committed suicide, and appears to have suffered from periodic insanity - brought on, so some averred, by the pains of love or the unintended effects of a love philtre. — Lucretius

Lucretius, who follows [Epicurus] in denouncing love, sees no harm in sexual intercourse provided it is divorced from passion. — Lucretius

It's easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net. — Lucretius

The body searches for that which has injured the mind with love. — Lucretius

Lucretius Quotes About Nature

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! — Lucretius

Nature impelled men to make sounds with their tongues And they found it useful to give names to things Much for the same reason that we see children now Have recourse to gestures because they cannot speak And point their fingers at things which appear before them. — Lucretius

But centaurs never existed; there could never be So to speak a double nature in a single body Or a double body composed of incongruous parts With a consequent disparity in the faculties. The stupidest person ought to be convinced of that. — Lucretius

...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. — Lucretius

Nature obliges everything to change about. One thing crumbles and falls in the weakness of age; Another grows in its place from a negligible start. So time alters the whole nature of the world And earth passes from one state to another. — Lucretius

Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself. — Lucretius

Death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal. — Lucretius

For men know not what the nature of the soul is; whether it is engendered with us, or whether, on the contrary, it is infused into us at our birth, whether it perishes with us, dissolved by death, or whether it haunts the gloomy shades and vast pools of Orcus. — Lucretius

... deprived of pain, and also deprived of danger, able to do what it wants, [Nature] does not need us, nor understands our deserts, and it cannot be angry. — Lucretius

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death. — Lucretius

Lucretius Quotes About Mind

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? — Lucretius

It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind. — Lucretius

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows. — Lucretius

When the body is assailed by the strong force of time and the limbs weaken from exhausted force, genius breaks down, and mind and speech fail. [Lat., Ubi jam valideis quassatum est viribus aevi Corpus, et obtuseis ceciderunt viribus artus, Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque mensque.] — Lucretius

The mind like a sick body can be healed and changed by medicine. — Lucretius

How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings. [Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!] — Lucretius

True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind. — Lucretius

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight. — Lucretius

First, then, I say, that the mind, which we often call the intellect, in which is placed the conduct and government of life, is not less an integral part of man himself, than the hand, and foot, and eyes, are portions of the whole animal. — Lucretius

We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body. — Lucretius

Lucretius Quotes About Live

Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life. — Lucretius

Thus the sum of things is ever being reviewed, and mortals dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life. — Lucretius

Men conceal the past scenes of their lives. — Lucretius

Nay, the greatest wits and poets, too, cease to live; Homer, their prince, sleeps now in the same forgotten sleep as do the others. [Lat., Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum; Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus Sceptra potitus, eadem aliis sopitu quiete est.] — Lucretius

...Thus it comes That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains, Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, And whatsoever lives, if shut from food, Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more. — Lucretius

Now come: that thou mayst able be to know That minds and the light souls of all that live Have mortal birth and death, I will go on Verses to build meet for thy rule of life, Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil. — Lucretius

Our life must once have end; in vain we fly From following Fate; e'en now, e'en now, we die. — Lucretius

Those vestiges of natures left behind Which reason cannot quite expel from us Are still so slight that naught prevents a man From living a life even worthy of the gods. — Lucretius

Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other. — Lucretius

Lucretius Quotes About Fountain

In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers. — Lucretius

From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers. — Lucretius

From the midst of the very fountain of pleasure, something of bitterness arises to vex us in the flower of enjoyment. — Lucretius

Lucretius Famous Quotes And Sayings

Why shed tears that you must die? For if your past life has been one of enjoyment, and if all your pleasures have not passed through your mind, as through a sieve, and vanished, leaving not a rack behind, why then do you not, like a thankful guest, rise cheerfully from life's feast, and with a quiet mind go take your rest. — Lucretius

Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements. — Lucretius

If atom stocks are inexhaustible, Greater than power of living things to count, If Nature's same creative power were present too To throw the atoms into unions - exactly as united now, Why then confess you must That other worlds exist in other regions of the sky, And different tribes of men, kinds of wild beasts. — Lucretius

Even if I knew nothing of the atoms, I would venture to assert on the evidence of the celestial phenomena themselves, supported by many other arguments, that the universe was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections. — Lucretius

For it is unknown what is the real nature of the soul, whether it be born with the bodily frame or be infused at the moment of birth, whether it perishes along with us, when death separates the soul and body, or whether it visits the shades of Pluto and bottomless pits, or enters by divine appointment into other animals. — Lucretius

Violence and wrong enclose all who commit them in their meshes and do mostly recoil on him from whom they begin. — Lucretius

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. — Lucretius

Sweet it is, when on the high seas the winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the land on another's struggles. — Lucretius

No fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. Equally, there is nothing so mighty or so marvelous that the wonder it evokes does not tend to diminish in time. — Lucretius

The highest summits and those elevated above the level of other things are mostly blasted by envy as by a thunderbolt. — Lucretius

Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril. — Lucretius

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others. — Lucretius

... we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. — Lucretius

Never trust the calm sea when she shows her false alluring smile. — Lucretius

It is pleasant, when the sea is high and the winds are dashing the waves about, to watch from the shores the struggles of another. — Lucretius

The mask is torn off, while the reality remains — Lucretius

And part of the soil is called to wash away In storms and streams shave close and gnaw the rocks. Besides, whatever the earth feeds and grows Is restored to earth. And since she surely is The womb of all things and their common grave, Earth must dwindle, you see and take on growth again. — Lucretius

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

Tears for the mourners who are left behind Peace everlasting for the quiet dead. — Lucretius

The sum total of all sums total is eternal (meaning the universe). [Lat., Summarum summa est aeternum.] — Lucretius

Huts they made then, and fire, and skins for clothing, And a woman yielded to one man in wedlock... ... Common, to see the offspring they had made; The human race began to mellow then. Because of fire their shivering forms no longer Could bear the cold beneath the covering sky. — Lucretius

Did men but know that there was a fixed limit to their woes, they would be able, in some measure, to defy the religious fictions and menaces of the poets; but now, since we must fear eternal punishment at death, there is no mode, no means, of resisting them. — Lucretius

Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs. — Lucretius

And thus thou canst remark that every act At bottom exists not of itself, nor is As body is, nor has like name with void; But rather of sort more fitly to be called An accident of body, and of place Wherein all things go on. — Lucretius

Since you must admit that there is nothing outside the universe, it can have no limit and is accordingly without end or measure. It makes no odds in which part of it you may take your stand; whatever spot anyone may occupy, the universe stretches away from him just the same in all directions without limit. — Lucretius

We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays. — Lucretius

All life is a struggle in the dark. — Lucretius

How is it that the sky feeds the stars? — Lucretius

Out beyond our world there are, elsewhere, other assemblages of matter making other worlds. Ours is not the only one in air's embrace. — Lucretius

The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop. — Lucretius

It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the great distress of another. — Lucretius

Gently touching with the charm of poetry. — Lucretius

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. — Lucretius

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born. — Lucretius

Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working there. — Lucretius

A property is that which not at all Can be disjoined and severed from a thing Without a fatal dissolution: such, Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow To the wide waters, touch to corporal things, Intangibility to the viewless void. — Lucretius

I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky, And the primordial germs of things unfold, Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies And fosters all, and whither she resolves Each in the end when each is overthrown. This ultimate stock we have devised to name Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things, Or primal bodies, as primal to the world. — Lucretius

For out of doubt In these affairs 'tis each man's will itself That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs Incipient motions are diffused. — Lucretius

But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked About by body: there's in things a void- Which to have known will serve thee many a turn, Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt, Forever searching in the sum of all, And losing faith in these pronouncements mine. — Lucretius

Confess then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air. — Lucretius

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

All things around, convulsed with violent thunder, seem to tremble, and the mighty walls of the capacious world appear at once to have started and burst asunder. — Lucretius

There is nothing that exists so great or marvelous that over time mankind does not admire it less and less. — Lucretius

It is pleasurable, when winds disturb the waves of a great sea, to gaze out from land upon the great trials of another. — Lucretius

Thus, then, the All that is is limited In no one region of its onward paths, For then 'tmust have forever its beyond. — Lucretius

One Man's food is another Man's Poison — Lucretius

[N]ature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death. — Lucretius

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 so 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. — Lucretius

It is doubtful what fortune to-morrow will bring. [Lat., Posteraque in dubio est fortunam quam vehat aetas.] — Lucretius

Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is. — Lucretius

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. — Lucretius

Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods. — Lucretius

Life Lessons by Lucretius

1. Lucretius taught that life should be enjoyed and savored, as it is fleeting and uncertain. He also believed in the power of reason and logic to understand the world and make decisions. Lastly, he believed in living a life of moderation and balance, avoiding excess and indulgence.