Q0042

Lucretius

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Nothing can be created from nothing by divine agency.
Thinker Lucretius
School Epicureanism
Source De Rerum Natura I.150–158
Theme Nature
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with De Rerum Natura I.150–158, within the tradition of Epicureanism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of nature, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Lucretius's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Lucretius. (n.d.). Nothing can be created from nothing by divine agency. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0042

MLA: Lucretius. “Nothing can be created from nothing by divine….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0042.

Chicago: Lucretius. “Nothing can be created from nothing by divine….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0042.

Same thinker

More from Lucretius

  1. Therefore death is nothing to us, and does not concern us at all.
  2. Pleasant it is, when winds trouble the great sea, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation.
  3. When human life lay foully for all to see, crushed to the earth under heavy religion…
  4. From the very fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes among the flowers themselves.

All quotations by Lucretius

Same theme

More on nature

  1. Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.
  2. God, or Nature.
  3. [In the state of nature, the life of man is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  4. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
  5. The world is my representation.

Browse the nature theme