Friday, April 10, 2015

Titus Lucretius Carus..........................

..................was philosophizing some fifty years before the birth of Christ.  Good thing he wrote some of his stuff down:

Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet, divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parvo aequo animo; neque enim est umquam penuria parvi.
  • But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest wealth is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

Circumretit enim vis atque iniuria quemque, atque, unde exortast, at eum plerumque revertit.
  • Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

Ut quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum.
  • What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.

Nec prorsum vitam ducendo demimus hilum tempore de mortis nec delibare valemus.
  • By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

Sic rerum summa novatur semper, et inter se mortales mutua vivunt. augescunt aliae gentes, aliae
inuuntur, inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradiunt.

  • Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortals live dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.

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