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 ELDERExample is the softest and least invidious way of commanding.
More Pliny the Elder Quotes
-
-
Our civilization depends largely on paper.
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 -
In wine, there’s truth.
PLINY THE ELDER -
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 -
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 -
Let not things, because they are common, enjoy for that the less share of our consideration.
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 -
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 -
As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.
PLINY THE ELDER -
Cats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!
PLINY THE ELDER -
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 -
Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful?
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 -
The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.
PLINY THE ELDER -
The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.
PLINY THE ELDER -
Nothing is so unequal as equality.
PLINY THE ELDER -
On a farm the best fertilizer is the master’s eye.
PLINY THE ELDER -
Home is where the heart is.
PLINY THE ELDER -
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 -
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 -
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 -
The only certainty is uncertainty
PLINY THE ELDER -
The best kind of wine is that which is most pleasant to him who drinks it.
PLINY THE ELDER -
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 -
I think it is the most beautiful and humane thing in the world, so to mingle gravity with pleasure that the one may not sink into melancholy, nor the other rise up into wantonness.
PLINY THE ELDER