Top 100 Lucretius Quotes (2024 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. “What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others.”

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

16. “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

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

22. “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

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

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

— Lucretius

29. “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

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

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

— Lucretius

37. “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

38. “Fear is the mother of all gods.”

— Lucretius

39. “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

40. “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

41. “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

42. “The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.”

— Lucretius

43. “We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from.”

— Lucretius

44. “So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.”

— Lucretius

45. “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

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

— Lucretius

47. “From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.”

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

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

— Lucretius

50. “For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.”

— Lucretius