by Lucretius

Edited by: Chris OConnor  at: 10/30/05 4:39 pm

Amazing! In 60 BCE, scholars had already figured out that immortality is impossible... yet people still pratle on about it.

Edited by: Jeremy1952 at: 3/5/03 12:43:18 pm

This is one of my favorites so far, mainly because of its antiquity. I like the part reminding people that suffering shows how deeply intertwined the mind and body are, and therefore how illogical to expect the mind to exist after death.

I really like this quote from 2000 years ago:

Quote:

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If, however, one of greater age and more advanced in years should complain and lament, poor wretch, his death more than is right, would she not with greater cause raise her voice and rally him in sharp accents, "Away from this time forth with your tears, rascal; a truce to your complainings: you decay after full enjoyment of all the prizes of life. But because you always yearn for what is not present, and despise what is, life has slipped from your grasp unfinished and unsatisfying and unbeknownst to you, death has taken his stand at your pillow, before you could take your departure sated and filled.

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The majority of skeptics and reformers do no more than prune a cankered tree, to whose root they dare not apply the axe; they do not perceive that this tree will in the end produce the same fruit.