Lucretius

Huts they made then, and fire, and skins for clothing, And a woman yielded to one man in wedlock... ... Common, to see the offspring they had made; The human race began to mellow then. Because of fire their shivering forms no longer Could bear the cold beneath the covering sky.

No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings - the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.

The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.

Thus the sum of things is ever being reviewed, and mortals dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.

Many animals even now spring out of the soil, Coalescing from the rains and the heat of the sun. Small wonder, then, if more and bigger creatures, Full-formed, arose from the new young earth and sky. The breed, for instance, of the dappled birds Shucked off their eggshells in the springtime, as Crickets in summer will slip their slight cocoons All by themselves, and search for food and life. Earth gave you, then, the first of mortal kinds, For all the fields were soaked with warmth and moisture.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

Victory puts us on a level with heaven.

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

The first-beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.

Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.

I return to the newborn world, and the soft-soil fields, What their first birthing lifted to the shores Of light, and trusted to the wayward winds. First the Earth gave the shimmer of greenery And grasses to deck the hills; then over the meadows The flowering fields are bright with the color of springtime, And for all the trees that shoot into the air.

Sweet it is, when on the high seas the winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the land on another's struggles.

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

... 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.

...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

From the very fountain of enchantment there arises a taste of bitterness to spread anguish amongst the flowers.

From the heart of the fountain of delight rises a jet of bitterness that tortures us among the very flowers.

At this stage you must admit that whatever is seen to be sentient is nevertheless composed of atoms that are insentient. The phenomena open to our observation so not contradict this conclusion or conflict with it. Rather they lead us by the hand and compel us to believe that the animate is born, as I maintain, of the insentient.

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 from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.