What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.
—Lucretius
Topics: Taste, Style
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
It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.
—Lucretius
Topics: Wealth
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
The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.
—Lucretius
Topics: Contentment
Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.
—Lucretius
Topics: Pleasure
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
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
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
What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
—Lucretius
Topics: Food
From the midst of the very fountain of pleasure, something of bitterness arises to vex us in the flower of enjoyment.
—Lucretius
Topics: Bitterness
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: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings
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
The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.
—Lucretius
Topics: Perseverance, Persistence
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
Vineyards and shining harvests, pastures, arbors,
And all this our very utmost toil
Can hardly care for, we wear down our strength
Whether in oxen or in men, we dull
The edges of our ploughshares, and in return
Our fields turn mean and stingy, underfed,
And so today the farmer shakes his head,
More and more often sighing that his work,
The labour of his hands, has come to naught.
—Lucretius
Topics: Work
In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.
—Lucretius
Topics: Humor, Wit
From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.
—Lucretius
Topics: Paradise
Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.
—Lucretius
Topics: Conscience
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Virgil Roman Poet
- Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) Roman Poet
- Cicero Roman Philosopher
- Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) Roman Poet
- Catullus Roman Latin Poet
- Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) Roman Stoic Philosopher
- Claudian Roman Poet
- Marcus Manilius Roman Poet
- Persius Roman Poet
- Juvenal Roman Poet
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