Top 35 Pliny the Younger Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Unfinished paintings are more admired than the finished because the artist’s actual thoughts are left visible.”

— Pliny the Younger

2. “Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem.”

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

5. “Fear is a feeling that is stronger than love.”

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

7. “Everyone is prejudiced in favor of his own powers of discernment...”

— Pliny the Younger

8. “In the darkness you could hear the crying of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. Some prayed for help. Others wished for death. But still more imagined that there were no Gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness.”

— Pliny the Younger

9. “The living voice is that which sways the soul.”

— Pliny the Younger

10. “Peccant, qvia nihil peccant.”

— Pliny the Younger

11. “That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.”

— Pliny the Younger

12. “It is wonderful how the mind is stirred and quickened into activity by brisk bodily exercise.”

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

15. “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.”

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

17. “Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work.”

— Pliny the Younger

18. “Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.”

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

20. “Generosity, when once set going, knows not how to stop; as the more familiar we are with the lovely form, the more enamored we become of her charms.”

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

22. “The happier time, the quicker it passes.”

— Pliny the Younger

23. “It is better to excel in any single art than to arrive only at mediocrity in several, so moderate skill in several is to be preferred where one cannot attain to perfection in any.”

— Pliny the Younger

24. “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.”

— Pliny the Younger

25. “Let me into the secrets you would prefer no one to know.”

— Pliny the Younger

26. “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.”

— Pliny the Younger

27. “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.”

— Pliny the Younger

28. “Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and by sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye.”

— Pliny the Younger

29. “For however often a man may receive an obligation from you, if you refuse a request, all former favors are effaced by this one denial.”

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

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

— Pliny the Younger

33. “Necessity, that excellent master, hath taught me many things.”

— Pliny the Younger

34. “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.”

— Pliny the Younger

35. “But, if I were given my choice, I prefer the speech like the winter snows.”

— Pliny the Younger

36. “Perhaps you will ask whether I can raise these three millions without difficulty. Well, nearly all my capital is invested in land, but I have some money out at interest and I can borrow without any trouble.”

— Pliny the Younger

37. “Honor puts us under an obligation as binding as necessity is for other people.”

— Pliny the Younger

38. “They enhance the value of their favors by the words with which they are accompanied.”

— Pliny the Younger