Top 100 Lucretius Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Constant dripping hollows out a stone.”

— Lucretius

Featured in: Perseverance Quotes

2. “One Man’s food is another Man’s Poison.”

— Lucretius

3. “The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.”

— Lucretius

4. “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

5. “All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.”

— Lucretius

6. “Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.”

— Lucretius

7. “Never trust the calm sea when she shows her false alluring smile.”

— Lucretius

8. “The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.”

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

10. “Life is one long struggle in the dark.”

— Lucretius

11. “Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.”

— Lucretius

12. “There is no place in nature for extinction.”

— Lucretius

13. “Falling drops will at last wear away stone.”

— Lucretius

14. “The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.”

— Lucretius

15. “What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others.”

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

17. “True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.”

— Lucretius

18. “It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.”

— Lucretius

19. “To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.”

— Lucretius

20. “Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them.”

— Lucretius

21. “No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings – the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.”

— Lucretius

22. “Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.”

— Lucretius

23. “The mask is torn off, while the reality remains.”

— Lucretius

24. “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

25. “What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?”

— Lucretius

26. “The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.”

— Lucretius

27. “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

28. “To truly take the measure of a man, you must observe him in the midst of trial and tribulation-then, from the bottom of their hearts, men say what they believe; the mask is torn away, and what remains cannot deceive.”

— Lucretius

29. “Fear is the mother of all gods.”

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

31. “Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation; not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.”

— Lucretius

32. “Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.”

— Lucretius

33. “So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern 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, reality remains.”

— Lucretius

34. “Gently touching with the charm of poetry.”

— Lucretius

35. “How is it that the sky feeds the stars?”

— Lucretius

36. “Tis pleasant to stand on shore and watch others labouring in a stormy sea.”

— Lucretius

37. “Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas.”

— Lucretius

38. “There is nothing that exists so great or marvelous that over time mankind does not admire it less and less.”

— Lucretius

39. “The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.”

— Lucretius

40. “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

41. “Human life lay foul before men’s eyes, crushed to the dust beneath religion’s weight.”

— Lucretius

42. “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

43. “For there is a VOID in things; a truth which it will be useful for you, in reference to many points, to know; and which will prevent you from wandering in doubt.”

— Lucretius

44. “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

45. “Truths kindle light for truths.”

— Lucretius

46. “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

47. “O goddess, bestow on my words an immortal charm.”

— Lucretius

48. “So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.”

— Lucretius

49. “Only religion can lead to such evil.”

— Lucretius

50. “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