So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.
Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely.
Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?
Gently touching with the charm of poetry.
It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.
What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?
Whenever anything changes and quits its proper limits, this change is at once the death of that which was before.
The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.
Such crimes has superstition caused.
Under what law each thing was created, and how necessary it is for it to continue under this, and how it cannot annul the strong rules that govern its lifetime.
Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.
For fools admire and love those things they see hidden in verses turned all upside down, and take for truth what sweetly strokes the ears and comes with sound of phrases fine imbued.
It’s easier to avoid the snares of love than to escape once you are in that net whose cords and knots are strong; but even so, enmeshed, entangled, you can still get out unless, poor fool, you stand in your own way.
So much wrong could religion induce.
Not they who reject the gods are profane, but those who accept them.
There is no place in nature for extinction.
Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.
The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.
If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets.
We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays.