Pliny the Elder

How richly equipped is this world of ours!

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

Custom is an authority that is most effectual.

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

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.

The sea is the most delightful of all neighbours.

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

The first invention of man was a sail.

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.

All men have one entrance into life, and the like going out of it.

The memory of past favors is a sure presage of future benefits.

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark when neither is attended.

The erudition of the wisest man is like the hair of a child.

What can we see, where can we look, without being struck by the hand of God?

The elephant is the largest of them all, the most gentle and intelligent.

The swan is the creature nearest to music.

Wine is the most wholesome and most salutary of drinks to man.

The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superiour and a wise education, is the having a good digestion.

The best remedy against all ills is exercise.

The mind grows by what it feeds on.