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On the Nature of Things quotes
10 quotes from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #785 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
Therefore death to us Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least, Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.
This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature's aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium: Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void. But since there's void in all begotten things, All solid matter must be round the same; Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hides And holds a void within its body, unless Thou grant what holds it be a solid.
Which well perceived if thou hold in mind, Then Nature, delivered from every haughty lord, And forthwith free, is seen to do all things Herself and through herself of own accord, Rid of all gods.
So seest thou not, how, though external force Drive men before, and often make them move, Onward against desire, and headlong snatched, Yet is there something in these breasts of ours Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?-- Wherefore no less within the primal seeds Thou must admit, besides all blows and weight, Some other cause of motion, whence derives This power in us inborn, of some free act.-- Since naught from nothing can become, we see.
Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest His dauntless heart to be the first to rend The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.
In how great perils, in what darks of life Are spent the human years, however brief!-- O not to see that nature for herself Barks after nothing, save that pain keep off, Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy Delightsome feeling, far from care and fear!
For food it is must keep things whole, renewing; 'Tis food must prop and give support to all,-- But to no purpose, since nor veins suffice To hold enough, nor nature ministers As much as needful.
For far beneath the ken of senses lies The nature of those ultimates of the world; And so, since those themselves thou canst not see, Their motion also must they veil from men-- For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft Yet hide their motions, when afar from us Along the distant landscape.
Nor shall one sense have power to blame itself, Because it always must be deemed the same, Worthy of equal trust.