Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.
LucretiusThe nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.
LucretiusIt is pleasurable, when winds disturb the waves of a great sea, to gaze out from land upon the great trials of another.
Lucretius