Quotes from On the Nature of Things

Quotations follow the A.E. Stallings translation (Penguin Classics, 2007) — our recommended edition.

1. 2

   Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

2. 3

   So great the evils to which religion could prompt!

3. 4

   It is sweet, when the winds trouble the waters of a great sea, to watch from land the struggles of another.

4. 5

   It is sweet, when on the great sea the winds trouble its waters, to behold from land another's deep distress; not that it is a pleasure and delight that any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what evils you are yourself exempt.

5. 6

   What to one man is food, to another is rank poison.

6. 7

   Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men, dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars makest to teem the many-voyaged main and fruitful lands.

7. 8

   Whilst human kind throughout the lands lay miserably crushed before all eyes beneath Religion — who would show her head along the region skies, glowering on mortals with her hideous face.

8. 9

   Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

9. 10

   Death therefore to us is nothing, concerns us not a jot, since the nature of the mind is proved to be mortal.

10. 11

    Therefore the living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe.

11. 12

    Life is granted to none in fee-simple, to all in usufruct.

12. 13

    Why not then take thy departure like a guest filled with life, and with resignation, thou fool, enter upon untroubled rest?

13. 14

    O miserable minds of men! O blinded breasts! In what darkness of life and in how great dangers is passed this term of life whatever its duration!

14. 15

    In this way then the walls too of the great world around shall be stormed and fall to decay and crumbling ruin.