Q0230

Lucretius

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

When human life lay foully for all to see, crushed to the earth under heavy religion…
Thinker Lucretius
School Epicureanism
Source De Rerum Natura I.62–63
Theme Fear
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with De Rerum Natura I.62–63, 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 fear, 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.). When human life lay foully for all to see, crushed to the earth under heavy religion… In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0230

MLA: Lucretius. “When human life lay foully for all to….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0230.

Chicago: Lucretius. “When human life lay foully for all to….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0230.

Same thinker

More from Lucretius

  1. Nothing can be created from nothing by divine agency.
  2. Therefore death is nothing to us, and does not concern us at all.
  3. Pleasant it is, when winds trouble the great sea, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation.
  4. From the very fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes among the flowers themselves.

All quotations by Lucretius

Same theme

More on fear

  1. There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
  2. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
  3. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
  4. the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
  5. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.

Browse the fear theme