71 definitions
The book's index
On the Nature of the Gods
59 concepts · 71 definitions
- air1
- anthropomorphism1
- body1
- chance1
- civilization1
- climate1
- conflagration1
- deification1
- design2
- divination1
- earwax1
- eloquence1
- Epicureanism1
- eye1
- fluency1
- fortune1
- gods2
- goodness1
- great year1
- greatness1
- habit1
- hand1
- hearing1
- heat1
- heaven2
- immortality1
- impiety1
- inaction1
- instinct1
- irreverence1
- leadership1
- love1
- luxury1
- man2
- meat eating1
- medicine1
- mythology1
- nature3
- order1
- philosopher1
- pig1
- planet1
- providence2
- religion2
- ruling part1
- sect1
- senses1
- sphere1
- superstition1
- symbiosis1
- time2
- tongue1
- universe1
- vanity1
- vine1
- virtue1
- winter1
- world4
- worship1
World (n.) must be a living and wise being, since it produces living and wise beings out of itself — as an olive that sprouted tuned pipes would plainly hold music.
World (n.) was made for reasonable beings — gods and men — since nothing is equal to reason.
World (n.) must be wise; otherwise man, a mere part of it and endowed with reason, would be superior to the whole.
World (n.) is like a large and beautiful house: no one could be persuaded it was built for mice and weasels, though the master is never seen.
Nature (n.) is the chain that binds the world together, drawing every extremity toward the centre with judgment and reason.
Nature (n.) is an artificial fire, proceeding in a regular way to generation — the master of all other arts.
Nature (n.) has nothing faulty in her administration: whoever tries to mend her will either make things worse or aim at impossibilities.
Man (n.) is in no wise perfect but a particle of perfection, born to contemplate and imitate the world.
Man (n.) was made upright so as to be not merely a dweller on the earth but a spectator of the heavens and the stars — a privilege granted to no other creature.
Heaven (n.) would prove the gods at once to men who had lived all their lives in rich houses underground and then came up to see the sun and stars.
Heaven (n.) hold nothing fortuitous; all that is counterfeit, deceitful and erroneous lives about the earth, beneath the moon.
Time (n.) is Saturn devouring his children: ever insatiable, it consumes the rolling years, and only the stars chain it from immoderate haste.
Time (n.) destroys the fictions of error and opinion, while it confirms the determinations of nature and of truth.
Gods (n.) take care of great things and disregard the small: a storm on a man's vineyard is no sign that heaven hates him.
Gods (n.) must exist, for there are interpreters of the gods, and whoever has interpreters must exist himself.
Providence (n.) supplies so many delicious birds and fishes that one is tempted to believe it an Epicurean.
Providence (n.) is the intelligence of the universe, whose chief care is that the world want nothing and be adorned with every beauty.
Religion (n.) comes from relegere, "to read over again": the religious are those who diligently go over again all the duties of worship.
Religion (n.) is born partly of terror: thunder, plague, earthquakes, comets and rain like drops of blood raised in mankind a firm belief in some divine power.
Design (n.) is plain even to barbarians: carry Posidonius's orrery into Scythia or Britain and no one there would doubt it was made by reason.
Design (n.) is assumed in a picture, a ship under sail, a water-clock — so how can the universe, which contains all arts and all artificers, be void of reason?
Chance (n.) could no more make a world than gold letters flung on the ground could fall into the Annals of Ennius — fortune could hardly make a single verse.