The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.Collection: Wisdom
Life is one long struggle in the dark.Collection: Life
What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.Collection: Food
So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.Collection: Religion
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 you are free of them yourself is pleasant.Collection: Great
Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.Collection: Religion
Never trust the calm sea when she shows her false alluring smile.Collection: Sea
We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body.Collection: Strength
The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.Collection: Rainy Day
Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself.Collection: World
It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.Collection: Greatest Wealth
The water hollows out the stone, not by force but drop by drop.Collection: Water
No matter how difficult a task may look.. Persistence and steady action will get you throughCollection: Encouragement
Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is.Collection: Adversity
Fear was the first thing on Earth to create gods.Collection: Earth
Why shed tears that you must die? For if your past life has been one of enjoyment, and if all your pleasures have not passed through your mind, as through a sieve, and vanished, leaving not a rack behind, why then do you not, like a thankful guest, rise cheerfully from life's feast, and with a quiet mind go take your rest.Collection: Death
You alone govern the nature of things. Without you nothing emerges into the light of day, without you nothing is joyous or lovely.Collection: Light
The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.Collection: Pits
Nothing can be created out of nothing.Collection: Preparation
If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist.Collection: Doe
We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays.Collection: Mind
All things obey fixed laws.Collection: Law
To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.Collection: Life
Fear is the mother of all gods ... Nature does all things spontaneously, by herself, without the meddling of the gods.Collection: Mother
Nothing comes from nothing.Collection: Cause And Effect
Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.Collection: Lying
Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present. They have been accustomed to move and to meet in all manner of ways. For this reason, it came to pass that being spread abroad through a vast time and trying every sort of combination and motion, at length those come together that produce great things, like earth and sea and sky and the generation of living creatures.Collection: Moving
The first-beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.Collection: Creativity
Constant dripping hollows out a stone.Collection: Inspirational
...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.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Fighting
Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.Collection: Grandma
All things around, convulsed with violent thunder, seem to tremble, and the mighty walls of the capacious world appear at once to have started and burst asunder.Collection: Wall
Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.Collection: Fall
... 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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Men
Such evil deeds could religion prompt.Collection: Evil
It is a pleasure for to sit at ease Upon the land, and safely for to see How other folks are tossed on the seas That with the blustering winds turmoiled be.Collection: Ocean
Gently touching with the charm of poetry.Collection: Poetry
Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.Collection: Philosophy
Men conceal the past scenes of their lives.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Life
In the midst of the fountain of wit there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers.Collection: Flower
You may complete as many generations as you please during your life; none the less will that everlasting death await you.Collection: Death