Pliny The Younger Quotes

That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.

However often you may have done them a favour, if you once refuse they forget everything except your refusal.

That those supports may be shaken, and collapse, for the popularity of evil men is as fickle as the men themselves.

So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners; it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.

The smallest evil if neglected, will reach the greatest proportions.

The highest of characters is his who is as ready to pardon the moral errors of mankind as if he were every day guilty of them himself; and as cautious of committing a fault as if he never forgave one.

In the pleading of cases nothing pleases so much as brevity.

And as in men's bodies, so in government, that disease is most serious which proceeds from the head.

Everyone is prejudiced in favor of his own powers of discernment ...

Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit - There is no book so bad that it is not profitable on some part.

It is difficult to retain what you may have learned unless you should practice it. -Difficile est tenere quae acceperis nisi exerceas

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.

Everyone must be given something he can grasp and recognize as his own idea.

Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive, of our actions; and although it happen not to attend the worthy deed, yet it is by no means the less fair for having missed the applause it deserved.

There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death.

Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work.

So when you 3 go hunting you can adopt my advice, and carry your tablets as well as your food-basket and flask, for you will find that Minerva roams the mountains no less than Diana.

You summon us, we follow. You order us to be free and so we will be.

It is not true that the world is too tired and exhausted to produce anything worth praising.

Literature is both my joy and my comfort: it can add to every happiness and there is no sorrow it cannot console.

Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of us, whilst those placed before the rest of the company consisted simply of cheap dishes and scraps. There were, in small bottles, three different kinds of wine; not that the guest might take their choice, but that they might not have any option in their power; one kind being for himself, and for us; another sort for his lesser friends (for it seems he has degrees of friends), and the third for his own freedmen and ours. My neighbour . . . asked me if I approved the arrangement. Not at all, I told him. "Pray, then," he asked, "what is your method upon such occasions?" "Mine," I returned, "is to give all my visitors the same reception; for when I give an invitation, it is to entertain, not distinguish, my company: I place every man upon my own level whom I admit to my table." . . . He replied, "This must cost you a great deal." "Not in the least." "How can that be?" "Simply because, although my freedmen don't drink the same wine as myself, yet I drink the same as they do." And, no doubt about it, if a man is wise enough to moderate his appetite, he will not find it such a very expensive thing to share with all his visitors what he takes himself. Restrain it, keep it in, if you wish to be true economist. You will find temperance a far better way of saving than treating other people rudely can be. . . . Remember, then, nothing is more to be avoided than this modern alliance of luxury with meanness; odious enough

Fear is a feeling that is stronger than love.

there may be greater glory in obedience where the desire to obey is less

The erection of a monument is superfluous, our memory will endure if our lives have deserved it.

Never do a thing concerning the rectitude of which you are in doubt.

Being lately engaged to plead a cause before the Court of the Hundred, the crowd was so great that I could not get to my place without crossing the tribunal where the judges sat. And I have this pleasing circumstance to add further, that a young nobleman, having had his tunic torn, an ordinary occurrence in a crowd, stood with his gown thrown over him, to hear me, and that during the seven hours I was speaking, whilst my success more than counterbalanced the fatigue of so long a speech. So let us set to and not screen our own indolence under pretence of that of the public. Never, be very sure of that, will there be wanting hearers and readers, so long as we can only supply them with speakers and writers worth their attention.