Quotes About Pliny

Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?

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.

It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.

Modestus said of Regulus that he was "the biggest rascal that walks upon two legs."

I shall continue to be anxious about him until he can permit himself some distraction and allow his wound to heal; nothing can do this but acceptance of the inevitable, lapse of time, and surfeit of grief.

He would deny this is confronted, citing evasively his affection for Dante and Giotto, but anything overtly religious filled him with a pagan alarm; and I believe that like Pliny, whom he resembled in so many respects, he secretly thought it to be a degenerate cult carried to extravagant lengths.

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.

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.

Pliny reports solemnly, "It is said that if a person is rubbed with asparagus beaten up in oil, he will never be stung by bees.

Now, that the sovereign power and deity, whatsoever it is, should have regard of mankind, is a toy and vanity worthy to be laughed at.

the Stoics, from which notably Cicero (Rep., 6, 17) and Pliny the Elder (NH, 2,13) drew their inspiration, made the sun the soul or spirit of the world, 'who governs not only the seasons and the lands, but the very stars and the sky' (ibid.). So the imperial cult appropriated some solar theology.

Pliny whispers in my ear, 'Different days pass verdict on different men and only the last day a final verdict on all men; and consequently no day is to be trusted.

Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.

garum was invented by the Greeks, according to Pliny,

Europe's history of trading relations with India is borne out in the writings of the ancient historians Herodotus, Pliny, Petronius and Ptolemy, and

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.

Pliny the Elder, who when Rome was burning requested Nero to play You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille. Never got a dinner!

In the first century A.D., Pliny estimated that the average Roman citizen consumed only 25 grams of salt a day. The modern American consumes even less if the salt content of packaged food is not included.

Sounds fell all about me; I vibrated like still water ruffled by wind. Cicadas were out in full force...I had heard them begin at twilight and was struck with the way they actually do start up, like an out of practice orchestra, creaking and grinding and all out of synch. The frogs added their unlocatable notes, which always seem to me to be so arbitrary and anarchistic, and crickets piped in, calling their own tune which they have been calling since the time of Pliny..

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.

Ah! How little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much. And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive.

Well, well, sooner or later we shall come to that landmark in almost every Adventure, Pliny the Elder; and so here he is again, bitching as usual; but, as usual, telling us things of great interest.

Pliny suggested that the ostrich, then newly discovered, was the result of a cross between a giraffe and a gnat. (It would, I suppose, have to be a female giraffe and a male gnat.) In practice there must be many such crosses which have not been attempted because of a certain understandable lack of motivation.

My old friend Pliny, not long before Vesuvius put an end to him, wrote that the ostrich hides its head in a bush when attacked and thinks its whole body is concealed," said Martial. "See how the attendants have placed bits of shrubbery all around the arena, so that the bird may demonstrate its foolish behavior?