The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri
Per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli.
Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,
Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre
Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae,
Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.
Lovely it is, when the winds are churning up the waves on the great sea, to gaze out from the
land on the great efforts of someone else; not because it’s an enjoyable pleasure that somebody is
in difficulties, but because it’s lovely to realize what troubles you are yourself spared. Lovely
also to witness great battle-plans of war, carried out across the plains, without your having any
share in the danger. But nothing is sweeter than to occupy the quiet precincts that are well
protected by the teachings of the wise, from where you can look down on others and see them
wandering all over the place, getting lost and seeking the way in life, striving by their wits,
pitting their noble birth, by night and by day struggling by superior efforts to rise to power at the
top and make all theirs.
‘De Rerum Natura’ bk. 2, l. 1
Augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuntur,
Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum
Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.
Some races increase, others are reduced, and in a short while the generations of living creatures
are changed and like runners relay the torch of life.
‘De Rerum Natura’ bk. 2, l. 7
Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.
Death therefore is nothing to us nor does it concern us a scrap, seeing that the nature of the
spirit we possess is something mortal.
‘De Rerum Natura’ bk. 3, l. 830
Scire licet nobis nil esse in morte timendum
Nec miserum fieri qui non est posse neque hilum
Differre an nullo fuerit iam tempore natus,
Mortalem vitam mors cum immortalis ademit.
We can know there is nothing to be feared in death, that one who is not cannot be made
unhappy, and that it matters not a scrap whether one might ever have been born at all, when death
that is immortal has taken over one’s mortal life.
‘De Rerum Natura’ bk. 3, l. 866
Vitaque mancipio, nulli datur, omnibus usu.