So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains. - Titus Lucretius Carus
fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, because they see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine. - Titus Lucretius Carus
Visible objects therefore do not perish utterly, since nature repairs one thing from another and allows nothing to be born without the aid of another's death. - Titus Lucretius Carus
The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind. - Titus Lucretius Carus
We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear. - Titus Lucretius Carus
Constant dripping hollows out a stone. - Titus Lucretius Carus
this terror then and drakness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of day, but by the aspect and the law of nature; the warp whose design we shall begin with this first principle, nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power. - Titus Lucretius Carus