Lucretius Mind Quotations

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

How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings. [Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!]

We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays.

Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows.

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

Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?

The body searches for that which has injured the mind with love.

When the body is assailed by the strong force of time and the limbs weaken from exhausted force, genius breaks down, and mind and speech fail. [Lat., Ubi jam valideis quassatum est viribus aevi Corpus, et obtuseis ceciderunt viribus artus, Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque mensque.]

The mind like a sick body can be healed and changed by medicine.

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.

For common instinct of our race declares That body of itself exists: unless This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not, Naught will there be whereunto to appeal On things occult when seeking aught to prove By reasonings of mind.

We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body.

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

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

For piety lies not in being often seen turning a veiled head to stones, nor in approaching every altar, nor in lying prostratebefore the temples of the gods, nor in sprinkling altars with the blood of beastsbut rather in being able to look upon all things with a mind at peace.

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; for never is there any lack of a little.