Pliny the Elder
Better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author and natural philosopher of some importance who wrote Naturalis Historia.
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The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.
Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she [Nature] abandon to cries and lamentations.
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 upon as quite impossible until they have actually been effected?
The human features and countenance, although composed of but some ten parts or little more, are so fashioned that among so many thousands of men there are no two in existence who cannot be distinguished from one another.
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.
With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.
In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.
The only certainty is that nothing is certain.
It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.
When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.
It has been observed that the height of a man from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot is equal to the distance between the tips of the middle fingers of the two hands when extended in a straight line.
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.
This is Italy, land? sacred to the Gods.
Fortune favours the brave…
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