Pliny the Younger quotes

Pliny the Younger was a Roman lawyer, author, and magistrate, renowned for his detailed letters describing Roman life and significant events, such as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. His correspondence provides valuable insight into the politics, society, and daily routines of the Roman Empire. He is remembered as an important witness to history and a skilled literary figure. Here are 55 of his quotes:

The living voice is that which sways the soul.

Pliny the Younger

The expense of a monument is superfluous; my memory will endure if my actions deserve it.

Pliny the Younger

As it is far better to excel in any single art, than to arrive only at a mediocrity in several; so on the other hand, a moderate skill in several is to be preferred, where one cannot attain to excellency in any.

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

He used to say that "no book was so bad but that some good might be got out of it."

Pliny the Younger

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

Pliny the Younger

By then day had broken everywhere, but here it was still night-no, more than night.

Pliny the Younger

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

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

Votes go by number, not weight; nor can it be otherwise in assemblies of this kind, where nothing is more unequal than that equality which prevails in them.

Pliny the Younger

It is allowed to poets to lie.

Pliny the Younger

More cruel than death itself, to die at that particular conjuncture!

Pliny the Younger

Everything was done.

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

It is in the body politic, as in the natural, those disorders are most dangerous that flow from the head.

Pliny the Younger

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

This expression of ours, "Father of a family."

Pliny the Younger

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

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

I am sensible how much nobler it is to place the reward of virtue in the silent approbation of one's own breast than in the applause of the world. Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive of our actions.

Pliny the Younger

Experience, that excellent master.

Pliny the Younger

Oblige people never so often, and, if you deny them on a single point, they remember nothing but that refusal.

Pliny the Younger