Lucretius Body Quotations

But centaurs never existed; there could never be So to speak a double nature in a single body Or a double body composed of incongruous parts With a consequent disparity in the faculties. The stupidest person ought to be convinced of that.

But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked About by body: there's in things a void- Which to have known will serve thee many a turn, Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt, Forever searching in the sum of all, And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.

When bodies spring apart, because the air Somehow condenses, wander they from truth: For then a void is formed, where none before; And, too, a void is filled which was before.

All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they're set, and where they're moved around.

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.

For it is unknown what is the real nature of the soul, whether it be born with the bodily frame or be infused at the moment of birth, whether it perishes along with us, when death separates the soul and body, or whether it visits the shades of Pluto and bottomless pits, or enters by divine appointment into other animals. [Lat., Ignoratur enim, quae sit natura animai; Nata sit, an contra nascentibus insinuetur; Et simul intereat nobiscum, morte diremta, An tenebras Orci visat, vastasque lacunas: An pecudes alias divinitus insinuet se.]

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

Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.

And thus thou canst remark that every act At bottom exists not of itself, nor is As body is, nor has like name with void; But rather of sort more fitly to be called An accident of body, and of place Wherein all things go on.

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