Pliny the Younger Quotes

Nothing is more unequal than equality itself.

– Pliny the Younger

Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. ‘Let us leave the road while we can still see, ‘I said, ‘or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.’ We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.

– Pliny the Younger

As in a man’s life, so in his studies, I think it is the most beautiful and humane thing in the world, so to mingle gravity with pleasure that the one may not sink into melancholy, nor the other rise up into wantonness.

– Pliny the Younger

A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection upon the buyer’s judgment.

– Pliny the Younger

Informations without the accuser’s name subscribed must not be admitted in evidence against anyone, as it is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and by no means agreeable to the spirit of the age.

– Pliny the Younger

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this – that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That’s right. I am quite well.

– Pliny the Younger

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

– Pliny the Younger

However often you may have done them a favor, if you once refuse they forget everything except your refusal.

– Pliny the Younger

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

– Pliny the Younger

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

– Pliny the Younger

His only fault is that he has no fault.

– Pliny the Younger

It is better to excel in any single art than to arrive only at mediocrity in several.

– Pliny the Younger

Prosperity proves men to be fortunate, while it is adversity which makes them great.

– Pliny the Younger

I contemplate the sort of friend, the sort of man I am now without. He completed his sixty-seventh year, a reasonable age for the sturdiest of us; I acknowledge that. He escaped from an interminable illness; I acknowledge that. He died with his dear ones surviving him, and at a time of prosperity for the state, which was dearer to him than all else; that too I acknowledge. Yet I lament his death as though he were young and in glowing health. I lament it – you can consider me a weakling in this – on my own account, for I have lost the witness, guardian and teacher of my life.

– Pliny the Younger

He died full of years and of glory, as illustrious by the honours he refused, as by those he accepted.

– Pliny the Younger

Such is the disposition of mankind, if they cannot blast an action, they will censure the parade of it; and whether you do what does not deserve to be taken notice of, or take notice yourself of what does, either way you incur reproach.

– Pliny the Younger

The lust of lucre has so totally seized upon mankind, that their wealth seems rather to possess them, than they to possess their wealth.

Pliny the Younger

This expression of ours, Father of a family.

– Pliny the Younger

Too much polishing weakens rather than improves a work.

– Pliny the Younger

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

– Pliny the Younger

Everyone is prejudiced in favor of his own powers of discernment.

– Pliny the Younger

Modestus said of Regulus that he was ‘the biggest rascal that walks upon two legs.

– Pliny the Younger

The prince is not above the laws, but the laws above the prince.

– Pliny the Younger

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

– Pliny the Younger

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

– Pliny the Younger

To all this, his illustrious mind reflects the noblest ornament; he places no part of his happiness in ostentation, but refers the whole of it to conscience; and seeks the reward of a virtuous action, not in the applauses of the world, but in the action itself.

– Pliny the Younger

It is allowed to poets to lie.

– Pliny the Younger