Among these things, one thing seems certain – that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.
PLINY THE ELDERMan 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.
More Pliny the Elder Quotes
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Let that which is wanting in income be supplied by economy.
PLINY THE ELDER -
Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life.
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 -
The enjoyments of this life are not equal to its evils.
PLINY THE ELDER -
A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection upon the buyer’s judgment.
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 -
We ought to be guarded against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority wherever it resides.
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 -
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 -
The agricultural population produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers,46 and a class of citizens the least given of all to evil designs.
PLINY THE ELDER -
Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.
PLINY THE ELDER -
The happier the moment the shorter.
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.
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It has become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth (In Vino Veritas).
PLINY THE ELDER -
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.
PLINY THE ELDER






