17 Pliny the Younger Quotes

Pliny the Younger quotes

1. An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

   Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

2. He (Pliny the Elder) used to say that 'no book was so bad but that some good might be got out of it.'

3. That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.

4. Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye...We put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please.

5. His only fault is that he has no fault.

   Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

1. 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.

2. Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work.

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

4. They enhance the value of their favors by the words with which they are accompanied.

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

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

7. Let us strive the more earnestly therefore to lengthen out our span of life-- life that is poured out like water and falls as the leaf-- if not by action (the means to which lie in another's power), yet in any case by study and research; and since it is not granted us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived.

8. 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.

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

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. The living voice is that which sways the soul.