Lucretius Quotes

Death is nothing to us: for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.

Nothing suffers annihilation, but at dissolution there is a change, and things fall back to the essential element in which they were before.

Everything that has been will be, everything that will be is, everything that will be has been.

Nothing can be created out of nothing.

Men and women, empires and cities, thrones, principalities, and powers, mountains, rivers, and unfathomed seas, worlds, spaces, and universes, all have their day, and all must go.

Everything is created to be annihilated.

The true return to nature is the definitive return to the elements-death.

I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

Being is born of not being.

There is zero, and there is eternity, and there is mortality, but there is no ultimate.

The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me

In my end is my beginning - that's what people are always saying. But what does it mean?

Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

Everything comes from everything, and everything is made out of everything, and everything returns into everything.

Everything that comes together falls apart. Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, and so it will fall apart. I’m gonna fall apart, probably before this chair. And you’re gonna fall apart. The cells and organs and systems that make you you—they came together, grew together, and so must fall apart. The Buddha knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia after his death: Entropy increases. Things fall apart.

All things of the world are born of being; being is born of nonbeing.

If there is existence, there must be non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, there must have been a time before that - when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or non-existence?

I am certain that I have been here as I am now a thousand times before, and I hope to return a thousand times.

Among the great things which are found among us the existence of Nothing is the greatest.

Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.