How many things… are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?
PLINY THE ELDERThis only is certain, that there is nothing certain.
More Pliny the Elder Quotes
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The javelin-snake amphiptere hurls itself from the branches of trees.
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Many dishes bring many diseases.
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True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read.
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Cats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!
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Hope is a working-man’s dream.
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It is generally much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it.
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Better do nothing than do ill.
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This only is certain, that there is nothing certain.
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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 or not, are only amusements.
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The lust of avarice as so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them than they possess their wealth.
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The happier the moment the shorter.
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A short death is the sovereign good hap of human life.
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The perverted ingenuity of man has given to water the power of intoxicating where wine is not procured. Western nations intoxicate themselves by moistened grain.
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Simple diet is best: for many dishes bring many diseases, and rich sauces are worse than even heaping several meats upon each other.
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The only thing man knows instinctively is how to weep.
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No man’s abilities are so remarkably shining as not to stand in need of a proper opportunity.
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Human nature craves novelty.
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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.
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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.
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Man naturally yearns for novelty.
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In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
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Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.
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Truth comes out in wine.
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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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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.
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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