Top 100 Pliny the Elder Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Nulla dies sine linea – Not a day without a line.”

— Pliny the Elder

2. “Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man.”

— Pliny the Elder

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3. “Home is where the heart is.”

— Pliny the Elder

4. “Nulla dies sine linea.”

— Pliny the Elder

5. “From the end spring new beginnings.”

— Pliny the Elder

6. “Sutor, Ne Ultra Crepidam.”

— Pliny the Elder

7. “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.”

— Pliny the Elder

8. “In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.”

— Pliny the Elder

9. “True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read.”

— Pliny the Elder

10. “Truth comes out in wine.”

— Pliny the Elder

11. “Amid the sufferings of life on earth, suicide is God’s best gift to man.”

— Pliny the Elder

12. “There is always something new out of Africa.”

— Pliny the Elder

13. “When collapse is imminent, the little rodents flee.”

— Pliny the Elder

14. “Hope is a working-man’s dream.”

— Pliny the Elder

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

— Pliny the Elder

16. “An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.”

— Pliny the Elder

17. “In vino veritas.”

— Pliny the Elder

18. “This only is certain, that there is nothing certain.”

— Pliny the Elder

19. “The master’s eye is the best fertilizer.”

— Pliny the Elder

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

— Pliny the Elder

21. “When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.”

— Pliny the Elder

22. “No mortal man, moreover is wise at all moments.”

— Pliny the Elder

23. “The brain is the citadel of sense perception.”

— Pliny the Elder

24. “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.”

— Pliny the Elder

25. “The enjoyments of this life are not equal to its evils.”

— Pliny the Elder

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

— Pliny the Elder

27. “Ex Africa semper aliquid novi.”

— Pliny the Elder

28. “The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.”

— Pliny the Elder

29. “There is, to be sure, no evil without something good.”

— Pliny the Elder

30. “There is alas no law against incompetency; no striking example is made. They learn by our bodily jeopardy and make experiments until the death of the patients, and the doctor is the only person not punished for murder.”

— Pliny the Elder

31. “In time of sickness the soul collects itself anew.”

— Pliny the Elder

32. “Better do nothing than do ill.”

— Pliny the Elder

33. “Human nature is fond of novelty.”

— Pliny the Elder

34. “In wine, there’s truth.”

— Pliny the Elder

35. “The great business of man is to improve his mind, and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements.”

— Pliny the Elder

36. “Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.”

— Pliny the Elder

37. “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.”

— Pliny the Elder

38. “It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man.”

— Pliny the Elder

39. “Our youth and manhood are due to our country, but our declining years are due to ourselves.”

— Pliny the Elder

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

— Pliny the Elder

41. “There is in them a softer fire than the ruby, there is the brilliant purple of the amethyst, and the sea green of the emerald – all shining together in incredible union. Some by their splendor rival the colors of the painters, others the flame of burning sulphur or of fire quickened by oil.”

— Pliny the Elder

42. “Nothing which we can imagine about Nature is incredible.”

— Pliny the Elder

43. “Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.”

— Pliny the Elder

44. “It is a maxim universally agreed upon in agriculture, that nothing must be done too late; and again, that everything must be done at its proper season; while there is a third precept which reminds us that opportunities lost can never be regained.”

— Pliny the Elder

45. “Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides.”

— Pliny the Elder

46. “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 the Elder

47. “We neglect those things which are under our very eyes, and heedless of things within our grasp, pursue those which are afar off.”

— Pliny the Elder

48. “Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked up on as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?”

— Pliny the Elder

49. “Men are most apt to believe what they least understand; and through the lust of human wit obscure things are more easily credited.”

— Pliny the Elder

50. “Our civilization depends largely on paper.”

— Pliny the Elder