Quotes from Pliny the Elder

we rest not contented with natural poisons, but betake ourselves to many mixtures and compositions artificial, made even with our own hands. But what say you to this? Are not men themselves mere poisons by nature? For these slanderers and backbiters in the world, what do they else but launch poison out of their black tongues, like hideous serpents?

Nor does their understanding, which is blinded and bent only on avarice, perceive that this very thing might be more safely done by means of science.

Nulle dies sine linea.

The greatest value among the objects of human property, not only among precious stones, is due to the diamond, for a long time known only to kings and even to very few of these.

The path of the Sun consists of 360 degrees; but, in order that the shadow may return to the same point of the dial, we are obliged to add, in each year, five days and the fourth part of a day. On this account an intercalary day is given to every fifth year, that the period of the seasons may agree with that of the Sun.

Vinegar even has been mixed with honey;

The only certainty is that nothing is certain

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.

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.

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

Amid the sufferings of life on earth, suicide is God's best gift to man.

Hope is a working-man's dream.

The only thing man knows instinctively is how to weep.

We listen with deep interest to what we hear, for to man novelty is ever charming.

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.

Man naturally yearns for novelty.

No mortal man, moreover is wise at all moments.

Wine maketh the band quivering, the eye watery, the night unquiet, lewd dreams, a stinking breath in the morning, and an utter forgetfulness of all things.

Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creatures.

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.

Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life.

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.

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.

God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion.