Pliny The Elder Quotes

“Home is where the heart is”

— Pliny The Elder

“Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man.”

— Pliny The Elder

“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

“No mortal man, moreover is wise at all moments.”

— Pliny The Elder

“The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.”

— Pliny The Elder

“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

“Wine refreshes the stomach, sharpens the appetite, blunts care and sadness, and conduces to slumber.”

— Pliny The Elder

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

“Nothing is more useful than wine for strengthening the body and also more detrimental to our pleasure if moderation be lacking.”

— Pliny The Elder

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

“When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.”

— Pliny The Elder

“The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honour, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon.”

— Pliny The Elder

“Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.”

— Pliny The Elder

“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

We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.

— Pliny The Elder

“Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?”

— Pliny The Elder

“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

“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

“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

“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.”

— Pliny The Elder

“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

“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

“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

“No man's abilities are so remarkably shining as not to stand in need of a proper opportunity.”

— Pliny The Elder

“Our youth and manhood are due to our country, but our declining years are due to ourselves.”

— Pliny The Elder

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Example is the softest and least invidious way of commanding.”

— Pliny The Elder

“In the literary as well as military world, most powerful abilities will often be found concealed under a rustic garb.”

— Pliny The Elder

Let that which is wanting in income be supplied by economy.

— Pliny The Elder

War should neither be feared nor provoked.

— Pliny The Elder

“We live by reposing trust in each other.”

— Pliny The Elder

The graceful tear that streams for others' Man is the weeping animal born to govern all the rest.

— Pliny The Elder

“Sure, football is a silly game. But have you seen what else is on television?”

— Pliny The Elder

“The only thing man knows instinctively is how to weep.”

— Pliny The Elder

“In wine there is health (In vino sanitas)”

— Pliny The Elder

It has become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth (In Vino Veritas).

— Pliny The Elder

“The happier the moment the shorter.”

— Pliny The Elder

The best kind of wine is that which is most pleasant to him who drinks it.

— Pliny The Elder

Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.

— Pliny The Elder

“There is, to be sure, no evil without something good.”

— Pliny The Elder

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

Let not things, because they are common, enjoy for that the less share of our consideration.

— Pliny The Elder

“It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs.”

— Pliny The Elder

“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

“Cats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!”

— Pliny The Elder

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!

— Pliny The Elder

“A short death is the sovereign good hap of human life.”

— Pliny The Elder