Related:

• 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.
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book vii, Sect. 2...
• With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book vii, Sect. 5...
• All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpe
  and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water....
• It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to him a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book vii, Sect. 1...
• Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book xxviii, Sect. 23...
• Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvellous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time?
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book vii, Sect. 6...
• The bird of passage known to us as the cuckoo. -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book xviii, Sect.
  249...
• 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.
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book vii, Sect. 77...
• 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....