"True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read."
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Quote collection
Pliny the Elder quotes (page 4 of 7)
131 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Men are most apt to believe what they least understand; and through the lust of human wit obscure things are more easily credited."
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"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."
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"We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides."
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"...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."
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"Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess."
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"No book so bad but some part may be of use."
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"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."
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"Our youth and manhood are due to our country, but our declining years are due to ourselves."
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"No one is wise at all times."
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"Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others."
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"The first (barbers) that entered Italy came out of Sicily and it was in the 454 yeare after the foundation of Rome. Brought in they were by P. Ticinius Mena as Verra doth report for before that time they never cut their hair. The first that was shaven every day was Scipio Africanus, and after cometh Augustus the Emperor who evermore used the razor."
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"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."
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"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."
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"There is an herb named in Latine Convolvulus (i.e. with wind), growing among shrubs and bushes, with carrieth a flower not unlike to this Lilly, save that it yeeldeth no smell nor hath those chives within; for whitenesse they resemble one another very much, as if Nature in making this floure were a learning and trying her skill how to frame the Lilly indeed."
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"Compassion and shame come over one who considers how precarious is the origin of the proudest of living beings: often the smell of a lately extinguished lamp is enough to cause a miscarriage. And to think that from such a frail beginning a tyrant or butcher may be born! You who trust in your physical strength, who embrace the gifts of fortune and consider yourself not their ward but their son, you who have a domineering spirit, you who consider yourself a god as soon as success swells your breast, think how little could have destroyed you!"
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"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."
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"Chance is a second master."
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"Our civilization depends largely on paper."
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"The leading distinction in magnets is the sex, male and female, and the next great difference in them is the colour. Those of Magnesia, bordering on Macedonia, are of a reddish black; those of Breotia are more red than black; and the kind that is found in Troas is black, of the female sex, and consequently destitute of attractive power."
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