Pliny the Elder Quotes

71 quotes in 840 categories

• Human nature is fond of novelty.
• No one is wise at all times.
• Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of…
• Nulla dies sine linea - Not a day without a line.
• Among these things, one thing seems certain - that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.
• There is no book so bad that some good can not be got out of it,
• In wine there is health (In vino sanitas)
• It has become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth (In Vino Veritas).
• Made up of the glories of the most precious gems, to describe them is a matter of inexpressible difficulty. For there is amongst them the…
• Honey comes out of the air At early dawn the leaves of trees are found bedewed with honey. Whether this is the perspiration of the…
• Wine refreshes the stomach, sharpens the appetite, blunts care and sadness, and conduces to slumber.
• When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.
• The only certainty is uncertainty
• The great business of man is to improve his mind, and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass…
• The ancients had little doubt about the true shape of the earth: "It's [the world's] shape has the rounded appearance of a perfect sphere. This…
• Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures.
• The javelin-snake amphiptere hurls itself from the branches of trees.
• Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful?
• God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion.
• True happiness consists in being considered deserving of it.

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