pliny the elder

“ It is a difficult task to impart a sense of novelty to what is old, to give authenticity to what is new, to make the worn shine, to throw light on darkness, to make the rejected significant, to make the doubtful credible, to give everything it proper nature and to give Nature all that is hers. ”

“ Sure, football is a silly game. But have you seen what else is on television? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, morality has lost its hold on men, but the quest for profit has not. Now that the sea is open, all coasts hospitable, great crowds set sail not in order to gain knowledge but for profit. ”

“ A short death is the sovereign good hap of human life. ”

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

“ Our forefathers regarded as a prodigy the passage of the Alps: first by Hannibal and, more recently, by the Cimbri. ”

“ When peace is stable and an emperor may take satisfaction in material and cultural progress, no new knowledge is added from new studies. Indeed even the old discoveries are no longer been studied properly ”

“ Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. ”

“ Wonderful is the wit and subtiltie that dumb creatures have & how they shift for themselves and annoy their enemies: which is the only difficultie that they have to arise and grow to so great an height and excessive bignesse. ”