Tao Te Ching
Lucretius
(Titus Carus)
99 – 55 BCE
The greatest Western philosophical poet, a complete evolutionist, writer of the “loftiest poetry that any age has known” and the “most marvelous performance in all antique literature” (Durant); Lucretius described religion, the universe, and medicine from a rational point of view without superstition, faith, or dogma. An Epicurean with allegiance to only Venus and the power of love, he left behind all other gods and proposed a scientific understanding of the world including atomic theory and evolution. A huge influence on ancient times, people like Virgil and Horace; he also inspired Enlightenment era people, humanism, Thomas Jefferson and modern psychology.
Eras
Chinese
Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE)Sources
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Unlisted Sources
Quotes by Lucretius (34 quotes)
“Nothing arises in the body in order that we may use it, but what arises brings forth its own use”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Nothing exists but atoms and the void”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Piety lies not in praying or prostrating to images, in going to temples, or in rituals, beliefs, and practices. It lies in looking upon all things with equanimity and peace.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“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.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“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.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Fools admire and love falsely claimed truths that only sweetly stroke the ears.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“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.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“This fear, this night of the mind must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun, but by the face of nature and her laws.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“We are all sprung from the same seed, all have the same father by whom mother earth conceives and supplies for a pleasant life and the continuation of our race”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures change and like runners pass on the torch of life.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Any belief in a God who takes an interest in punishing or rewarding humans can’t rise above a virulent form of superstition.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“now here, now there, the vital forces conquer and, in turn, are conquered; with the funeral dirge mingles the wail that babies raise when they reach the shores of light.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Fiery fevers quit your body no quicker if you’re clothed in expensive, embroidered clothes than if you’re only wearing a common garment.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Propitious Queen of Love whose vital power, air, earth and sea supplies… by they prolific might, springs and beholds the regions of the light”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“what is created gives rise to it’s own function… Sight does not exist before the birth of the eyes, nor speech before the creation of the tongue.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Cause the savage works of war to be lulled to rest vanquished by the never-healing wound of love”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“When human life laid prostrate on the earth crushed down under the weight of religion, Epicurus found the living source of his soul and passed far beyond the flaming walls of convention finding the wonders of mind, the spirit of the immeasurable universe in turn putting under foot and trampling down on religion.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Our lives we borrow and men, like runners, pass along the torch of life.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Mankind, tired out with a life of brute force, lay exhausted from its feuds; and therefore the more readily submitted its own free will to laws and stringent codes.”
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“No single thing abides, but all things flow
Fragment to fragment clings; the things thus grow”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Minds of living things and the light fabric of their spirits are neither birthless nor deathless.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Death is nothing to us and no concern of ours since our tenure of the mind is mortal... We have nothing to fear in death. One who no longer is cannot suffer... pain and sorrow will never touch you again.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Away with your tears, old reprobate! Have done with your grumbling! You are withering now after tasting all the joys of life. But, because you are always pining for what is not and unappreciative of the things at hand, your life has slipped away unfulfilled and unprized... To none is life given in freehold; to all only on lease.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Epicurus himself—whose genius outshone the race of men and dimmed them all as the stars are dimmed by the rising of the fiery sun—died. And will you kick and protest against your sentence?”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“It must not be supposed that innate vices can be completely eradicated by education; but, the lingering traces of inborn temperament that cannot be eliminated by philosophy are so slight that there is nothing to prevent men from leading a life worthy of the gods.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“So long as the object of our craving is unattained, it seems more precious than anything. But once it is ours, we crave for something else.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“No single thing abides; but all things flow.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“love is built up bit by bit by mere usage. Nothing can resist the continually repeated impact of a blow, however light, as you see drops of water falling on one spot at long last wear through a stone.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“Do not think that by avoiding grand passions you are missing the delights of Venus... Lovers' passion is storm-tossed, even in the moment of fruition, by waves of delusion and incertitude.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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“To say, as Heraclitus does, that everything is fire, and nothing can be numbered among things as a reality except fire, seems utterly crazy. This strikes me as not only pointless but mad.”
from De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
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Quotes about Lucretius (7 quotes)
“There was a thin, small stream of fine learning and of fine thinking up to the 1st century—witness Lucretius and Cicero—but it did not spread into the mass of the people... the broad principles of modern geology shine through the speculations of Lucretius; [but] the true figure to represent the classical Roman attitude to science is not Lucretius, but that Roman soldier who hacked Archimedes to death”
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“According to Lucretius, necessity led men to invent and then inventions spawned frivolous needs that equipped and encouraged them to slaughter one another in war.”
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“Who were the great thinkers of Rome? Lucretius first and finest of all. Yet, because his philosophy was not his own, but with modest candor ascribed to Epicurus, and because his influence upon his own people and upon posterity was esoteric and sporadic, touching only the topmost minds, we shall have to let him stand outside our circle [of the 10 greatest minds of all time].”
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“The verses of sublime Lucretius are destined to perish only when a single day will consign the world to destruction.”
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“The greatest poet as well as the greatest philosopher of Rome, Lucretius was a strange man, nervous and unstable—a man born for peace but forced to live in the midst of Caesar's alarms; a man with the make-up of a mystic and a saint, hardening himself into a materialist and a skeptic.”
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“The greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon? Lucretius' idea that all of life is the unending mutation of indestructible substances”
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“For the only eminent disciple of Epicurus, Lucretius, hardly any other great poet has had to wait so long for recognition. But in modern times, his merits have been almost universally acknowledged. For example, he and Benjamin Franklin were Shelley's favorite authors.”
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