Top 100 Pliny The Elder Quotes
#2. Nature makes us buy her presents at the price of so many sufferings that it is doubtful whether she deserves most the name of parent or stepmother.
Pliny The Elder
#3. Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.
Pliny The Elder
#4. In the literary as well as military world, most powerful abilities will often be found concealed under a rustic garb.
Pliny The Elder
#5. God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion.
Pliny The Elder
#7. Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life.
Pliny The Elder
#8. As for the garden of mint, the very smell of it alone recovers and refreshes our spirits, as the taste stirs up our appetite for meat.
Pliny The Elder
#9. Lust is an enemy to the purse, a foe to the person, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter of the senses, and finally, a mortal bane to all the body.
Pliny The Elder
#10. In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.
Pliny The Elder
#11. Always act in such a way as to secure the love of your neighbour.
Pliny The Elder
#13. Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked up on as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?
Pliny The Elder
#14. We neglect those things which are under our very eyes, and heedless of things within our grasp, pursue those which are afar off.
Pliny The Elder
#15. Cats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!
Pliny The Elder
#17. No man's abilities are so remarkably shining as not to stand in need of a proper opportunity.
Pliny The Elder
#19. The best kind of wine is that which is most pleasant to him who drinks it.
Pliny The Elder
#20. It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs.
Pliny The Elder
#21. Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.
Pliny The Elder
#22. Sure, football is a silly game. But have you seen what else is on television?
Pliny The Elder
#23. I would have a man generous to his country, his neighbors, his kindred, his friends, and most of all his poor friends. Not like some who are most lavish with those who are able to give most of them.
Pliny The Elder
#24. Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.
Pliny The Elder
#25. A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
Pliny The Elder
#26. Many other means there be, that promise the foreknowledge of things to come: besides the raising up and conjuring of ghosts departed, the conference also with familiars and spirits infernal. And all these were found out in our days, to be no better than vanities and false illusions ...
Pliny The Elder
#27. As touching peaches in general, the very name in Latine whereby they are called Persica, doth evidently show that they were brought out of Persia first.
Pliny The Elder
#29. To laugh, if but for an instant only, has never been granted to man before the fortieth day from his birth, and then it is looked upon as a miracle of precocity.
Pliny The Elder
#31. Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.
Pliny The Elder
#33. Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures.
Pliny The Elder
#34. Among these things, one thing seems certain - that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.
Pliny The Elder
#35. It is generally much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it.
Pliny The Elder
#36. Example is the softest and least invidious way of commanding.
Pliny The Elder
#37. Amid the sufferings of life on earth, suicide is God's best gift to man.
Pliny The Elder
#38. The lust of avarice as so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them than they possess their wealth.
Pliny The Elder
#39. As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.
Pliny The Elder
#41. True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read.
Pliny The Elder
#42. It is best not to be born or to die as soon as possible.
Pliny The Elder
#43. It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man.
Pliny The Elder
#44. In these matters, the only certainty is that nothing is certain
Pliny The Elder
#45. The desire to know a thing is heightened by its gratification being deferred.
Pliny The Elder
#49. It has become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth (In Vino Veritas).
Pliny The Elder
#50. There is alas no law against incompetency; no striking example is made. They learn by our bodily jeopardy and make experiments until the death of the patients, and the doctor is the only person not punished for murder.
Pliny The Elder
#52. Shellfish are the prime cause of the decline of morals and the adaptation of an extravagant lifestyle. Indeed of the whole realm of Nature the sea is in many ways the most harmful to the stomach, with its great variety of dishes and tasty fish.
Pliny The Elder
#53. The brain is the highest of the organs in position, and it is protected by the vault of the head; it has no flesh or blood or refuse. It is the citadel of sense-perception.
Pliny The Elder
#55. There is no book so bad that some good can not be got out of it,
Pliny The Elder
#59. Cincinnatus was ploughing his four jugera of land upon the Vaticanian Hill, the same that are still known as the Quintian Meadows, when the messenger brought him the dictatorship, finding him, the tradition says, stripped to the work.
Pliny The Elder
#60. Simple diet is best: for many dishes bring many diseases, and rich sauces are worse than even heaping several meats upon each other.
Pliny The Elder
#61. Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful?
Pliny The Elder
#62. Wine maketh the band quivering, the eye watery, the night unquiet, lewd dreams, a stinking breath in the morning, and an utter forgetfulness of all things.
Pliny The Elder
#63. Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?
Pliny The Elder
#64. The enjoyments of this life are not equal to its evils.
Pliny The Elder
#65. The graceful tear that streams for others' Man is the weeping animal born to govern all the rest.
Pliny The Elder
#67. We listen with deep interest to what we hear, for to man novelty is ever charming.
Pliny The Elder
#68. The leading distinction of magnets is sex ... The kind that is found in Troas is black, and of the female sex, and consequently destitute of attractive power.
Pliny The Elder
#69. It is a maxim universally agreed upon in agriculture, that nothing must be done too late; and again, that everything must be done at its proper season; while there is a third precept which reminds us that opportunities lost can never be regained.
Pliny The Elder
#71. Nothing is more useful than wine for strengthening the body and also more detrimental to our pleasure if moderation be lacking.
Pliny The Elder
#72. It has been observed that the height of a man from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot is equal to the distance between the tips of the middle fingers of the two hands when extended in a straight line.
Pliny The Elder
#73. Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides.
Pliny The Elder
#74. Our youth and manhood are due to our country, but our declining years are due to ourselves.
Pliny The Elder
#76. Most men are afraid of a bad name, but few fear their consciences.
Pliny The Elder
#77. Wine refreshes the stomach, sharpens the appetite, blunts care and sadness, and conduces to slumber.
Pliny The Elder
#78. As in our lives so also in our studies, it is most becoming and most wise, so to temper gravity with cheerfulness, that the former may not imbue our minds with melancholy, nor the latter degenerate into licentiousness.
Pliny The Elder
#79. Let that which is wanting in income be supplied by economy.
Pliny The Elder
#81. The agricultural population, says Cato, produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers, and a class of citizens the least given of all too evil designs.
Pliny The Elder
#82. When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.
Pliny The Elder
#83. The most valuable discoveries have found their origin in the most trivial accidents.
Pliny The Elder
#84. The only thing man knows instinctively is how to weep.
Pliny The Elder
#87. Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.
Pliny The Elder
#88. Now, that the sovereign power and deity, whatsoever it is, should have regard of mankind, is a toy and vanity worthy to be laughed at.
Pliny The Elder
#89. The human features and countenance, although composed of but some ten parts or little more, are so fashioned that among so many thousands of men there are no two in existence who cannot be distinguished from one another.
Pliny The Elder
#90. The javelin-snake amphiptere hurls itself from the branches of trees.
Pliny The Elder
#91. The most disgraceful cause of the scarcity [of remedies] is that even those who know them do not want to point them out, as if they were going to lose what they pass on to others.
Pliny The Elder
#92. We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.
Pliny The Elder
#93. Their best and most wholesome feeding is upon one dish and no more and the same plaine and simple: for surely this hudling of many meats one upon another of divers tastes is pestiferous. But sundrie sauces are more dangerous than that.
Pliny The Elder
#94. With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.
Pliny The Elder
#95. And that all seas are made calme and still with oile; and therefore the Divers under the water doe spirt and sprinkle it abroad with their mouthes because it dulceth and allaieth the unpleasant nature thereof, and carrieth a light with it.
Pliny The Elder
#96. Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man.
Pliny The Elder
#97. Accustom yourself to master and overcome things of difficulty; for if you observe, the left hand for want of practice is insignificant, and not adapted to general business; yet it holds the bridle better than the right, from constant use.
Pliny The Elder
#99. Wine takes away reason, engenders insanity, leads to thousands of crimes, and imposes such an enormous expense on nations.
Pliny The Elder
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