Pliny the Elder Quotes
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Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man.
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Let not things, because they are common, enjoy for that the less share of our consideration.
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What is there more unruly than the sea, with its winds, its tornadoes, and its tempests? And yet in what department of her works has Nature been more seconded by the ingenuity of man than in this, by his inventions of sails and of oars?
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An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
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Haec est Italia diis sacra
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Of all wonders, this is among the greatest, that some fresh waters close by the sea spring forth as out of pipes: for the nature of the waters also ceaseth not from miraculous properties.
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In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.
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All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat.
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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.
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Hardly can it be judged whether it be better for mankind to believe that the gods have regard of us, or that they have none, considering that some men have no respect and reverence for the gods, and others so much that their superstition is a shame to them.
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The world and that which, by another name, men have thought good to call Heaven (under the compass of which all things are covered), we ought to believe, in all reason, to be a divine power, eternal, immense, without beginning, and never to perish.
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To seek after any shape of God, and to assign a form and image to Him, is a proof of man's folly. For God, whosoever he be (if haply there be any other but the world itself), and in what part soever resident, all sense He is, all sight, all hearing: He is the whole of the life and of the soul, all of Himself.
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The only certainty is that nothing is certain.
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It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs.
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From the end spring new beginnings.
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Our forefathers regarded as a prodigy the passage of the Alps: first by Hannibal and, more recently, by the Cimbri; but at the present day, these very mountains are cut asunder to yield us a thousand different marbles; promontories are thrown open to the sea; and the face of Nature is being everywhere reduced to a level.
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The agricultural population, says Cato, produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers, and a class of citizens the least given of all to evil designs…. A bad bargain is always a ground for repentance.
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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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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.
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Home is where the heart is.
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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.
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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.
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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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It is far from easy to determine whether she Nature has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.