Inspirational Quotes by Lucretius (Roman Epicurean Philosopher)

Lucrē’tius (c.99–55 BCE,) fully Titus Lucretius Cārus, was a Roman poet and philosopher. He is celebrated for his six-book didactic hexametric poem On the Nature of Things, an exposition of the materialist atomist philosophy of Epicurus. He is also known for attempts to eradicate superstition and religious belief, which he viciously denounced as the source of man’s wickedness and wretchedness.

Lucretius’s De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) is both a foremost source for Epicurean philosophy and one of the masterpieces of Latin literature. His poem overflows with amazingly picturesque phrases, episodes of exquisite pathos, and vivid description, rarely rivaled in Latin poetry.

Lucretius wrote the poem to transmit into Latin culture the message from Greek Epicureanism that nothing invades our self-sufficiency in securing happiness. The centerpiece of Lucretius’s poem is a protracted argument that human beings are purely material things. So they cannot outlive the destruction of their physical bodies, and religion, which seeks to teach otherwise, is damaging superstition.

To support his case, Lucretius had to mount wide-ranging investigations of physical and psychological phenomena, which he described with great literary power. His attempt to prove that people are irrational to be worried about their future non-existence is often cited in contemporary moral philosophy.

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

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

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

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.
—Lucretius
Topics: Taste, Style

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.
—Lucretius
Topics: Blessings, Appreciation, Gratitude

The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.
—Lucretius
Topics: Contentment

Fly no opinion because it is new, but strictly search, and after careful view, reject it if false, embrace it if ’tis true.
—Lucretius
Topics: Opinion

The falling drops at last will wear the stone.
—Lucretius
Topics: Life, Perseverance

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
Topics: Pleasure

For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so 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

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
Topics: Facts

What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
—Lucretius
Topics: Food

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.
—Lucretius
Topics: Paradise

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

The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.
—Lucretius
Topics: Perseverance, Persistence

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.
—Lucretius
Topics: Adversity

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.
—Lucretius

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

O deaf to nature and to Heaven’s command, against thyself to lift the murdering hand!—Oh, damned despair, to shun the living light, and plunge thy guilty soul in endless night!
—Lucretius
Topics: Suicide

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Inspirational Quotes by Lucretius (Roman Epicurean Philosopher)

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