Related:

• It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs.
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book ii, Sect. 20...
• 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....
• 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...
• It was a custom with Apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered
  never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other,--a practice which has now passed into a proverb....
• Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough.
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book ii, Sect. 234...
• It is a maxim universally agreed upon in agriculture, that nothing must be done too late
  and again, that everything must be done at its proper seaso...
• 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....
• Let not things, because they are common, enjoy for that the less share of our consideration.
  -- Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) -- Natural History, Book xix, Sect. 59...