Pliny Quotes

In wine, there's truth.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.

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

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read.

[Pliny the Elder] used to say that “no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it.

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

In these matters, the only certainty is that nothing is certain

From the end spring new beginnings.

Nulla dies sine linea - Not a day without a line.

I texted Nightingale to let him know our change in disposition and then I picked up my Pliny, because nothing says stuck all alone in your flat like a Roman know-it-all

In vino veritas

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners; it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.

Wise men read books about history, Pliny. Strong men write them.

In the darkness you could hear the crying of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. Some prayed for help. Others wished for death. But still more imagined that there were no Gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness.

Home is where the heart is

It is best not to be born or to die as soon as possible.

Inert, ca un manechin, și dezgustat, mă lăsam sărutat de buze fade, iar ei erau așa de plini de bucuria lor, că nici nu băgau de seamă dezgustul meu.

Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive, of our actions; and although it happen not to attend the worthy deed, yet it is by no means the less fair for having missed the applause it deserved.

... Mother Nature is punishing us, ..., for our greed and selfishness. We torture her at all hours by iron and wood, fire and stone. We dig her up and dump her in the sea. We sink mine shafts into her and drag out her entrails - and all for a jewel to wear on a pretty finer. Who can blame her if she occasionally quivers with anger?" - Pliny, Pg. 176

A bronze plaque read: GAIUS PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS Dan made a face. "Get a load of the guy with the funny name." "I think that's Pliny the younger, the famous Roman writer," Amy supplied. She bent down to read the English portion of the tablet. "Right. In A.D. 79, Pliny chronicled the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It's one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of a major disaster." Dan yawned. "Doesn't this remind you of the clue hunt? You know–you telling me a bunch of boring stuff, and me not listening?

Dear Pliny,” Sevro sings over the com. If your heart beats like a drum, and your leg’s a little wet, it’s ’cause the Reaper’s come to collect a little debt. He sings this three times until Ragnar throws a table into the console. Sparks shower out. Sevro looks up slowly at the table hanging over his head. It missed by inches. He wheels around. “What the gorypissandshit is your damage, you overreacting mountain troll!” “Rhyming … nnnngh.” Ragnar makes an uncomfortable groaning sound. “You found him,” Mustang mutters as we share a look. “Which one?” I ask as Sevro curses the Stained out in every compound manner he knows. Adding the crux for good measure. “You squawk like a … like a chicken,” Ragnar says

Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.

privea spre cer cu ochi plini de blesteme; dar nici măcar o frunză nu se clinti din această pricină.

Cred ca numai copiii sunt atat de absorbiti de jocul lor, atat de plini de intamplarile lor, atat de cruzi, de nepasatori cu cei dimprejur cum am fost eu pana acum.

In the first century A.D., Pliny estimated that the average Roman citizen consumed only 25 grams of salt a day. The modern American consumes even less if the salt content of packaged food is not included.

There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death.

The smallest evil if neglected, will reach the greatest proportions.

Pliny paid for his "phenomena"!...I've paid a bit, too...everything worthwhile has its cost!...if it's free, you're down with the shithead fraternity! blabbermouths, charlatans, the whole gang!...into the crapper with 'em! every one! right in the shitter!...it's unlistenable!...just a bunch of farts!...I'm telling you!...

Nu vreau să cred că suferinţele sanctifică şi că înfrângerile sunt necesare. De ce ar trebui să ne apropiem de adevăr numai plini de răni? De ce ar trebui să fim sfâşiaţi de un vultur ca să avem curaj? Oare fericirea nu e aptă să ne înveţe ceea ce ne învaţă suferinţa? Nu există un drum spre artă şi spre noi înşine care să nu treacă prin infern? Nu poate ajunge la cer cine n-a străbătut pământul şi iadul, scria Goethe. Dar îl putem cita liniştiţi? Trebuie să ne temem de fericire, dacă vrem să atingem înălţimile din noi?

* The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. ALBERT EINSTEIN *I am too much a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything. T.H. HUXLEY *The only certainty is that nothing is certain. PLINY THE ELDER

Out of Africa, there is always something new.

You are a worm who thought himself a serpent just because you slither. But your power was not real, Pliny. It was all a dream. Time now to wake.

Roman writer Pliny (23–79 AD) wrote: ‘Not a year passed in which India did not take fifty million sesterces away from Rome.

Optimumque est, ut volgo dixere, aliena insania frui. And the best plan is, as the popular saying was, to profit by the folly of others. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis

Ochii ei frumoşi, odinioară atât de plini de pasiune şi de poftă de viaţă, erau acum goi şi opaci. Aproape morţi. Avea sentimentul că priveşte prin el." - Monica Ramirez, Asasin la feminin

but anything overtly religious filled him with a pagan alarm; and I believe that like Pliny, whom he resembled in so many respects, he secretly thought it to be a degenerate cult carried to extravagant lengths.

Motivele care-i determină pe oameni să acţioneze sunt în număr de trei: a) Egoismul, care determină bunăstarea individului; el este fără margini; b) Răutatea, care doreşte nenorocirea aproapelui; c) Mila, care vrea binele aproapelui; ea merge până la nobleţe şi grandoare. Orice acţiune omenească are drept cauză unul din aceste mobile, lucrând în parte sau împreună. Egoismul de care cu toţii suntem plini şi pe care-l ascundem din politeţe se trădează în momentul în care instinctiv căutăm în fiecare persoană pe care-o vedem o relaţie sau un mijloc de parvenire către unul din scopurile pe care le urmărim. Când facem o cunoştinţă nouă primul nostru gând este de a şti dacă şi cât ne poate fi folositoare; dacă nu poate, nu reprezintă nimic pentru noi. Este în natura fiinţei umane să vadă în aproapele său un posibil mijloc pentru a-şi atinge scopurile.

While Apicius is full of ancient delicacies such as roasted peacock, boiled sow vulva, testicles, and other foods we would not commonly eat today, there are many others that are still popular, including tapenade, absinthe, flatbreads, and meatballs. There is even a recipe for Roman milk and egg bread that is identical to what we call French toast. And, contrary to popular belief, foie gras was not originally a French delicacy. The dish dates back twenty-five hundred years, and Pliny credits Apicius with developing a version using pigs instead of geese by feeding hogs dried figs and giving them an overdose of mulsum (honey wine) before slaughtering them.

In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from the city. When he sat with her at home, she used to trace the outline of his shadow that a candle’s light cast on the wall. Then, in his absence she worked over the profile, deepening, so that she might enjoy his face, and remember. One day the father slapped some potter’s clay over the gouged plaster; when the clay hardened he removed it, baked it, and "showed it abroad" (63).

Turistii se adunau de acum in batalioane organizate inaintea catedralei, mitraliindu-I fatada cu o docilitate unaninma. In sort sau in bermude atacau plini de hotarare locurile sfinte, cu degetul pe tragaciul camerei de luat vederi, gata sa-l surprinda pe Dumnezeu in flagrant delict. Turistul nu crede in lucruri decat dupa ce le-a transfigurat in poze.

There is no book so bad it does not contain something good.

The happier time, the quicker it passes

Let me into the secrets you would prefer no one to know.

Sutor, Ne Ultra Crepidam

There is, to be sure, no evil without something good.

nihil novum nihil varium nihil quod non semel spectasse sufficiat

We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as disaster, which is Greek for “bad star,” influenza, Italian for (astral) “influence”; mazeltov, Hebrew—and, ultimately, Babylonian—for “good constellation,” or the Yiddish word shlamazel, applied to someone plagued by relentless ill-fortune, which again traces to the Babylonian astronomical lexicon. According to Pliny, there were Romans considered sideratio, “planet-struck.” Planets were widely thought to be a direct cause of death. Or consider consider: it means “with the planets,” evidently a prerequisite for serious reflection.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much: Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy: Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late, Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty....It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos.

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 success of Christianity was rooted in the Roman Empire, in its territorial extent, in the mobility that it promoted, in its towns and its cultural mix. From Pliny’s Bithynia to Perpetua’s Carthage, Christianity spread from its small-scale origins in Judaea largely because of the channels of communication across the Mediterranean world that the Roman Empire had opened up and because of the movement through those channels of people, goods, books and ideas. The irony is that the only religion that the Romans ever attempted to eradicate was the one whose success their empire made possible and which grew up entirely within the Roman world.

Closely related are the entries in his bestiary, a compendium of short tales of animals and moral lessons based on their traits. Bestiaries were popular among the ancients and in the Middle Ages, and the spread of printing presses meant that many were reprinted in Italy beginning in the 1470s. Leonardo had a copy of the bestiary written by Pliny the Elder and three others by medieval compilers.

Pliny suggested that the ostrich, then newly discovered, was the result of a cross between a giraffe and a gnat. (It would, I suppose, have to be a female giraffe and a male gnat.) In practice there must be many such crosses which have not been attempted because of a certain understandable lack of motivation.

Ah! How little they must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much. And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive.

Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit - There is no book so bad that it is not profitable on some part.

Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem.

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi.

You summon us, we follow. You order us to be free and so we will be.

that those supports may be shaken, and collapse, for the popularity of evil men is as fickle as the men themselves.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read.

But, if I were given my choice, I prefer the speech like the winter snows.

Harapan adalah tiang yang menyangga dunia.

Toți oamenii de talent, fie că au simțire sau nu, fie că sunt plini de zel, novici sau stăpâni - cu condiția să fie sinceri -, au momente în care subjugă și domină.

So when you 3 go hunting you can adopt my advice, and carry your tablets as well as your food-basket and flask, for you will find that Minerva roams the mountains no less than Diana.

The letters between Pliny and Trajan amount to one of the most loquacious non-Christian discussions of the new religion to survive. The Christian texts of the third, fourth and fifth centuries CE are some of the most extreme examples ever of the rewriting of history to fit the agenda of the winners. They construct a triumphalist history of Christianity as victorious both against its pagan rivals, despite cruel persecution by the Roman state, and against all the internal variants (‘heresies’, as later Christians defined them), which challenged what came to be Christian orthodoxy.

You know what's amusing? How people in this so-called American Liberty Movement constantly forward ideas as if nobody had ever thought of them before. If any of these fucktards had ever read Pliny, Cicero, Plutarch or Suetonius, they would know that nearly all political ideas were old news by the time of the Emperor Caligula. The American educational system is officially shit as far as I can tell.

During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church [...] But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe.

Being lately engaged to plead a cause before the Court of the Hundred, the crowd was so great that I could not get to my place without crossing the tribunal where the judges sat. And I have this pleasing circumstance to add further, that a young nobleman, having had his tunic torn, an ordinary occurrence in a crowd, stood with his gown thrown over him, to hear me, and that during the seven hours I was speaking, whilst my success more than counterbalanced the fatigue of so long a speech. So let us set to and not screen our own indolence under pretence of that of the public. Never, be very sure of that, will there be wanting hearers and readers, so long as we can only supply them with speakers and writers worth their attention.

Sid: She laughed and said to her oppo, 'Oh dear, how plebian. Bill: What's 'plebian'? Hancock: Plebian! It's from the latin 'plebes', defined by Pliny as derivative from 'plebiscum'. Bill: Yeah, but what does it mean? Hancock: It means you're a scruffbag!

The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.

The Empress Sabina had long ago formed her own theory about the nonsense in travel books. No traveler, having gone to the expense and trouble of venturing where most civilized people were too sensible to go, was going to come home and admit that it had been a waste of time. Instead, he had to pronounce his destination to be full of strange wonders, like the elk with no knees that could be caught by sabotaging the tree against which it leaned when it slept (Julius Caesar) or the men from India who could wrap themselves in their own ears (reported by the elder Pliny, who seemed to have written down everything he was ever told), or the blue-skinned Britons (Julius Caesar again). Strangely, no traveler had ever brought one of these creatures home for inspection. Doubtless they were impossible to capture, or died on the journey, or the blue came off in the wash.

…in Pliny’s time, it was believed that only the blood of a newly sacrificed kid, or lamb, could shatter a diamond. Pliny wondered—as many did until the seventeenth century when this ‘fact’ was still being quoted as a gemological curiosity—how anyone could have thought to experiment with such a thing … He did not realize that the story was probably a metaphor, perhaps with the same root as the Christian symbol of the Lamb of God. A diamond is the hardest substance; a sacrificed lamb or goat the most innocent. The only way to overcome harshness and brutality, the imagery suggests, is with love.

Silver mining in the United States didn’t start, like hard-core, until the mid-1850s,” Louis said. “And only really got big when the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859 in California.” “It was bad work. Dangerous. Like any mining. But silver also lets out fumes when it’s mined. Even Pliny the Elder wrote about how harmful the fumes were, especially to animals. You know Pliny the Elder?” “The problem with the silver fumes,” Louis continued, “is that, over time, they gave the miners delusions. Bad enough that they had to stop mining. Their health deteriorated. And a bunch of them even died.” Hard to make fun of something like that, so Pepper didn’t. “Do you know what people would say, in these mining towns, when they saw one of these miners falling apart? Walking through town muttering and swinging at phantoms? They said the Devil in Silver got them. It became shorthand. Like someone might say, ‘What happened to Mike?’ And the answer was always the same. ‘The Devil in Silver got him.’ ” Louis sat straight and crossed his arms and surveyed the table. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” “You’re saying we’re just making this thing up,” Pepper said quietly. Louis seemed disappointed. He dropped his hands into his lap and folded them there. He looked at his sister and Pepper. He turned his head to take in the other patients gathered with their family members there in the hospital. “I’m saying they were dying,” Louis said. “They definitely weren’t making that up. But it wasn’t a monster that was killing them. It was the mine.

Voiau să vorbească şi nu puteau, Le erau ochii plini de lacrimi. Amîndoi erau palizi şi slabi; dar pe chipurile acestea bolnăvicioase şi palide străluceau zorile unor preschimbări depline, ale învierii şi renaşterii lor la o viaţă noua. îi regenerase dragostea, inima unuia cuprindea izvoare nesecate de viaţă pentru inimă celuilalt.

,,Dacă lumea noastră curentă, barbară, parcurge o spirală ascendentă a corupției și brutalității, atunci descendenții noștri vor deveni atat de plini de cruzime și atât de perverși din punct de vedere moral, încât ar putea să ne privească suferind, ca să asiste cuprinși de orgasm la baile de sânge din care se trage civilizația noastră.

In vino veritas ("In wine, truth")

Peccant, qvia nihil peccant.

Nulla dies sine linea

Pe treptele îndepărtate ale altarului cel mare, gol precum trupul domnului, preoții zac prosternați în șoptită rugăciune(...) Ea stă în picioare lângă mine, palidă și rece, înveșmântată în umbrelele naosului negru ca păcatul, cu cotul fragil la brațul meu (...)Îi văd ochii întunecați și plini de suferință, frumoși ca ochii unei antilope. O, rană nemiloasă! Dumnezeu libidinos!

Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of us, whilst those placed before the rest of the company consisted simply of cheap dishes and scraps. There were, in small bottles, three different kinds of wine; not that the guest might take their choice, but that they might not have any option in their power; one kind being for himself, and for us; another sort for his lesser friends (for it seems he has degrees of friends), and the third for his own freedmen and ours. My neighbour . . . asked me if I approved the arrangement. Not at all, I told him. "Pray, then," he asked, "what is your method upon such occasions?" "Mine," I returned, "is to give all my visitors the same reception; for when I give an invitation, it is to entertain, not distinguish, my company: I place every man upon my own level whom I admit to my table." . . . He replied, "This must cost you a great deal." "Not in the least." "How can that be?" "Simply because, although my freedmen don't drink the same wine as myself, yet I drink the same as they do." And, no doubt about it, if a man is wise enough to moderate his appetite, he will not find it such a very expensive thing to share with all his visitors what he takes himself. Restrain it, keep it in, if you wish to be true economist. You will find temperance a far better way of saving than treating other people rudely can be. . . . Remember, then, nothing is more to be avoided than this modern alliance of luxury with meanness; odious enough when existing separate and distinct, but still more hateful where you meet with them together.

Zarea e ca si viitorul! In fata sufletului nostru sta un tot urias si nelamurit in care simtirea noastra se pierde ca si privirea, iar noi dorim plini de ardoare sa ne lasam cuprinsi cu voluptate de un unic, mare si splendid sentiment. Si cand alergam intr-acolo, cand acolo devine aici, totul e la fel ca mai inainte si ne simtim saraci si marginiti, si sufletul nostru tanjeste dupa mangaierea care a pierit.

I shall continue to be anxious about him until he can permit himself some distraction and allow his wound to heal; nothing can do this but acceptance of the inevitable, lapse of time, and surfeit of grief.

The laws of physics apply to everything equally, to stars as well as flowers. Botany and astronomy are separate sciences, but if they are somehow fundamentally inconsistent then there is something wrong with our theories. The need for such an all-encompassing vision was not really felt in the Classical past. Aristotle wrote very widely and was happy enough to draw analogies between disparate phenomena, but he was conspicuously silent on some topics (such as what we would now call chemistry) and gives little impression of the need for congruence and continuity. For encyclopedists such as Pliny, "local" explanations for things were often enough: phenomena are explained largely in terms of themselves, not in terms of other things. Where do the four humors, the bodily fluids that were thought to govern health, come from? Neither Galen nor Hippocrates, the two preeminent physicians of antiquity, tell us; they assume that it is just how things are.

Noținea de „revoluție” e amplă: ea cuprinde culmile cele mai înalte ale idealismului și brutalități abjecte. Ea își schimbă culorile, după oameni și împrejurări, coborînd de la spirit pînă la violență. Ca în orice revoluție, și în cea franceză, se disting două tipuri: revoluționarii din idealism și cei din resentiment. Primii vreau să ridice masele spre dînșii, cultura și libertatea lor. Ceilalți, cărora le-a mers multă vreme rău, sunt plini de răzbunare față de foștii lor stăpîni.

In the Roman psyche the East had long been a place of danger, but also a place of plenty. The first Emperor Augustus famously said of Rome that he found a city built in brick but left it in marble – all that money had to come from somewhere. India was repeatedly described in Roman sources as a land of unimaginable wealth. Pliny the Elder complained that the Roman taste for exotic silks, perfumes and pearls consumed the city. ‘India and China [and Arabia] together drain our Empire. That is the price that our luxuries and our womankind cost us.’ It was the construction of the Via Egnatia and attendant road-systems that physically allowed Rome to expand eastwards, while the capture of Egypt intensified this magnetic pull. Rome had got the oriental bug, and Byzantium, entering into a truce with the Romans in 129 BC following the Roman victory in the Macedonian Wars that kick-started Gnaeus Egnatius’ construction of the Via Egnatia, was a critical and vital destination before all longer Asian journeys began.

There is a white vein with a very small amount of liquid in it: … Men try to catch the murex alive because it discharges its juice when it dies. They obtain the juice from the larger purple-fish by removing the shell: they crush the smaller ones together with their shell, which is the only way to make them yield their juice.… The vein already mentioned is removed, and to this, salt has to be added in the proportion of about one pint for every 100 pounds. It should be left to dissolve for three days, since, the fresher the salt, the stronger it is. The mixture is then heated in a lead pot with about seven gallons of water to every fifty pounds and kept at a moderate temperature by a pipe connected to a furnace some distance away. This skims off the flesh which will have adhered to the veins, and after about nine days the cauldron is filtered and a washed fleece is dipped by way of a trial. Then the dyers heat the liquid until they feel confident of the result.—Gaius Plinius Secundus, Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis, first century

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 Trust me…history will record the battle at the Puerto Rico Trench the same way. ~High Commander Mustafa

I have spent these several days past, in reading and writing, with the most pleasing tranquility imaginable. You will ask, "How that can possibly be in the midst of Rome?" It was the time of celebrating the Circensian games; an entertainment for which I have not the least taste. They have no novelty, no variety to recommend them, nothing, in short, one would wish to see twice. It does the more surprise me therefore that so many thousand people should be possessed with the childish passion of desiring so often to see a parcel of horses gallop, and men standing upright in their chariots. If, indeed, it were the swiftness of the horses, or the skill of the men that attracted them, there might be some pretence of reason for it. But it is the dress they like; it is the dress that takes their fancy. And if, in the midst of the course and contest, the different parties were to change colours, their different partisans would change sides, and instantly desert the very same men and horses whom just before they were eagerly following with their eyes, as far as they could see, and shouting out their names with all their might. Such mighty charms, such wondrous power reside in the colour of a paltry tunic! And this not only with the common crowd (more contemptible than the dress they espouse), but even with serious-thinking people. When I observe such men thus insatiably fond of so silly, so low, so uninteresting, so common an entertainment, I congratulate myself on my indifference to these pleasures: and am glad to employ the leisure of this season upon my books, which others throw away upon the most idle occupations.

when Atlantic Monthly published one of Thoreau’s essays, called “Walking.” At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, when fences shall be multiplied, and mantraps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days are upon us. Anthropologists estimate that early man walked twenty miles a day. Mental and physical benefits have been attributed to walking as far back as ancient times. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) described walking as one of the “Medicines of the Will.” Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders.

The fact that an educated Roman governor and Consul (the highest possible office in the entire Roman Empire, short of actually being the Emperor) knows so little about Christianity that he has to conduct interrogations to get the basics proves that it was still a little known fringe movement at this time. What’s more, Trajan’s reply mentions no trial precedents or decrees against Christians, highlighting the fact that no trial records existed in Roman archives for famous Christians like Jesus, Peter or Paul. If there had been, Pliny would not had to go into detail describing the trials he conducted.

Pliny the Elder once said that the Romans, when they couldn’t make a building beautiful, made it big. The practice continues to be popular: If we can’t do it well, we make it larger. We add dollars to our income, rooms to our houses, activities to our schedules, appointments to our calendars. And the quality of life diminishes with each addition. On the other hand, every time that we retrieve a part of our life from the crowd and respond to God’s call to us, we are that much more ourselves, more human. Every time we reject the habits of the crowd and practice the disciplines of faith, we become a little more alive.

At the same distance from it is the city of Sala, situate on a river which bears the same name, a place which stands upon the very verge of the desert, and though infested by troops of elephants, is much more exposed to the attacks of the nation of the Autololes, through whose country lies the road to Mount Atlas, the most fabulous locality even in Africa. [...] There formerly existed some Commentaries written by Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who was commanded, in the most flourishing times of the Punic state, to explore the sea-coast of Africa. The greater part of the Greek and Roman writers have followed him, and have related, among other fabulous stories, that many cities there were founded by him, of which no remembrance, nor yet the slightest vestige, now exists. [V,1]

Nothing in this world is perpetual; Every thing, however seemingly firm, is in continual flux and change: The world itself gives symptoms of frailty and dissolution: How contrary to analogy, therefore, to imagine, that one single form, seeming the frailest of any, and subject to the greatest disorders, is immortal and indissoluble? What a daring theory is that! How lightly, not to say how rashly, entertained! How to dispose of the infinite number of posthumous existences ought also to embarrass the religious theory. Every planet, in every solar system, we are at liberty to imagine people with intelligent, mortal beings: At least we can fix on no other supposition. For these, a new universe must, every generation, be created beyond the bounds of the present universe: or one must have been created at first so prodigiously wide as to admit of this continual influx of beings. Ought such bold suppositions to be received by any philosophy: and that merely on the pretext of a bare possibility? When it is asked, whether Agamemnon, Thersites, Hannibal, Nero, and every stupid clown, that ever existed in Italy, Scythia, Bactria, or Guinea, are now alive; can any man think, that a scrutiny of nature will furnish arguments strong enough to answer so strange a question in the affirmative? The want of argument, without revelation, sufficiently establishes the negative. Quanto facilius, says Pliny, certiusque sibi quemque credere, ac specimen securitatis antegenitali sumere experimento. Our insensibility, before the composition of the body, seems to natural reason a proof of a like state after dissolution.

Văzând în fapta lui jignire, Boierii şi-au ieşit din fire: „Vecinu-i fire prost crescută, Un farmazon, un om năuc: Bea roşul vin ca un haiduc, La doamne mâna nu sărută, Doar da şi nu, nicicând poftim” - îl osândiră unanim. În satul său, pe-aceeaşi vreme Un alt boier sosi-n vecini, Stârnind aidoma dileme La moşierii cei meschini. Vladimir Lenski se numeşte, Direct din Gottirsgen soseşte: Frumos şi tânăr şi poet, Lui Kant discipol, interpret, El din Germania ceţoasă Aduse roadele ştiinţei — S-aline greul suferinţei; Fiinţă-aprinsă, curioasă, Cu negrul păr adus pe spate Vorbea cu foc de libertate. Adică francmason, aici în sens de liber-cugetător. Ferit de tina infamiei, Cu sufletul cuprins de-ardoare, Credea-n căldura prieteniei Şi-n duioşie de fecioare. În inima-i ce ignoranţă! — Nutrea statornic o speranţă. Şi-a lumii larmă, strălucire îi răscoleau tânăra-i fire, împodobind ideea-n haină De reverii şi dulce vis; Scruta cu sufletul deschis în viaţă-un scop, în lume-o taină Ce-i frământa adânca minte, …Visând minuni, ţintind nainte! Credea el că un suflet mare Se va uni cu el, odată, Că chipul gingaşei fecioare L-aşteaptă undeva curată; Sau că amicii-s plini de zel Să poarte lanţuri pentru el, Să sfarme-n ţăndări braţul lor Ulciorul clevetirilor; Că-n viaţă sunt aleşi ai sorţii, Prieteni sfinţi ai omenirii, Ce hărăziţi sunt nemuririi, Cu veşnica văpaie-a torţii Şi cu raza ei de înnoire S-aducă-n lume fericire. Revolta şi compătimirea, iubirea binelui avea Şi-a slavei dulce pătimire De june-n sânge-i clocotea. El lira şi-o plimba cu sete Sub cerul lui Schiller şi Goethe Şi sufletu-i vibra patetic, Aprins de jarul lor poetic. Şi-a muzelor înaltă artă N-a ruşinat-o el nicicând. Şi nimeni de semeţu-i gând N-a fost în stare să-l despartă, De dorul sfânt al tinereţii Şi gingăşia simplităţii.

Cred ca deja am scris in notele mele despre faptul ca iubirea se aseamana izbitor cu o tortura sau cu o operatie chirurgicala. Aceasta idee poate fi insa dezvoltata la modul cel mai chinuitor. Chiar daca cei doi amanti ar fi foarte indragostiti si plini de dorinte unul fata de celalalt, unul din ei va fi intotdeauna mai calm sau mai putin posedat decat celalalt. El - sau ea - este operatorul, sau calaul; celalalt, subiectul, victima. Auziti aceste suspine, preludiu al unei tragedii a dezonoarei, gemetele, strigatele, horcaiturile? Cine nu le-a proferat, cine nu le-a extorcat fara putinta de a se impotrivi? Si ce gasiti mai rau in supliciul profesat de niste tortionari meticulosi? Ochii acestia de somnambul, dati peste cap, membrele ale caror muschi tresar cu putere si se incordeaza, ca si cum ar fi actionati de o pila galvanica, betia, delirul, opiumul, in consecintele lor cele mai violente,nu va vor oferi, cu siguranta, exemple atat de curioase, atat de inspaimanatatoare. Si chipul omului, pe care Ovidiu il credea alcatuit pentru a oglindi astrele, iata-l nemairostind decat expresia unei ferocitati nebunesti ori destinzandu-se intr-un soi de moarte. Fiindca, desigur, as crede ca fac un sacrilegiu folosind extaz pentru acest soi de descompunere. -Infricosator joc, in care trebuie ca unul dintre jucatori sa-si piarda controlul de sine ! Odata, in fata mea, s-a pus intrebarea : in ce consta placerea cea mai mare a dragostei? Cineva a raspuns cu naturalete : in a primi; iar un altul : in a se datui. Primul spuse: placere orgolioasa! Iar al doilea: voluptate a umilintei! Toti acesti obsceni vorbeau ca din Imitatio Christi. In fine, s-a gasit un isolent utopist care a spus ca cea mai mare placere a dragostei este aceea de a forma cetateni pentru patrie. Eu spun ca unica, suprema voluptate, in iubire, sta in certitudinea de a face răul. Iar barbatul si femeia stiu asta din nastere ca intreaga voluptate se gaseste in rău.

Wonderful is the wit and subtiltie that dumb creatures have & how they shift for themselves and annoy their enemies: which is the only difficultie that they have to arise and grow to so great an height and excessive bignesse. The dragon therefore espying the Elephant when he goeth to releese, assaileth him from an high tree and launceth himselfe upon him; but the Elephant knowing well enough well enough he is not able to withstand his windings and knittings about him, seeketh to come close to some trees or hard rockes, and so forth to crush and squise the dragon between him and them: the dragons ware hereof, entangle and snarle his feet and legges first with their taile: the Elephants on the other side, undoe those knots with their trunke as with a hand: but to prevent that againe, the dragons put in their heads into their snout, and so stop their breath, and withall, fret and gnaw the tenderest parts that they find there. (Translated by Philomel Holland, 1601. "The Book of Naturalists: An Anthology of the Best Natural History", 1944. p. 20)

If I were to list all the positive attributes about Ryan Lilly, I’d run out of superior adjectives to use. I mean seriously, how big do you think my vocabulary is? I only know about a hundred million words, and with that small of a sample size, how could I accurately describe someone as great as Ryan? Ryan is the most amazing guy I’ve ever met. Seriously, I’m insanely jealous and I just want to stab him. But I won’t, because everybody loves Ryan, including me. Ryan is a big inspiration in my life. Not only is Ryan fiercely intelligent—on the level of Newton, da Vinci, and Nietzsche’s mustache—but he is the most open, honest, and understanding guy I’ve ever met. He’s the kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked. I know, because I’m wearing his shirt now. If you don’t know who Ryan Lilly is, you soon will. He’ll probably be one of the most talked about people in history, and just the other day I came across this quote from Pliny (I don’t know how old Pliny is, so I don’t know if it was Pliny the Older or Pliny the Younger) which said, “Everything good I have written about can be summed up in two words: Ryan Lilly.” That’s a real quote I read in a real book. Trust me, I’m a writer.

Parerea lui Iosif Maria: periculoasa intr-un stabiliment. Prea mult caracter. Nu joaca asa cum ii canti. Poate sa strice totul. Atentie daca se indragosteste. Fara indoiala ca bacanul ar fi dat-o afara de la Bear Flag. Nu poti sa te increzi decat in egoisti de teapa ta. Poti sa sti intotdeauna ce va face un egoist, in timp ce nu sti la ce te poti astepta de la o fiinta generoasa. Singura victima intr-adevar sigura este egoistul. Cu el n-ai niciodata neplaceri. Fauna era pe cale sa comita o greseala. Iosif Maria o evalua pe Suzy ca pe o masina de ocazie. Silueta frumoasa, glezne si picioare atragatoare. Draguta la chip, daca era fericita. Starea sufleteasca i se citea pe fata. O tarfa adevarata poarta o masca, este aceeasi pentru toata lumea, adica placuta, si nu-ti mai amintesti de ea a doua zi dimineata. Suzy nu era o fata pe care s-o uiti. Riscai cu ea prea mult. Suzy iubea sau nu iubea oamenii, ceea ce era periculos in sine. [...] Iar pe deasupra, ochii plini de indiferenta nu erau din aceia neinsufletiti, in care nu poti sa te increzi. Nu era smechera si ar fi putut sa lupte chiar impotriva lui Jack Dempsey. Una peste alta, Iosif Maria ar fi doborat-o pe Suzy in mai putin de un minut. Era tocmai genul de fata care s-ar fi putut indragosti de un baiat fara sa se intereseze ce cont are la banca. Genul care creeaza o gramada de necazuri fara a aduce nimic in schimb. Printr-o serie de trasaturi semana cu Doc. Bacanul isi zise ca o va avertiza pe Fauna inca o data. O asemenea fata in stabiliment te duce la faliment.

Ne simțim acasă în multe țări ale spiritului, cel puțin ca musafiri; scăpăm de fiecare dată din fundăturile terne, confortabile în care par să ne fi mânat preferința și prejudecata, tinerețea, originea, accidentele oamenilor și ale cărților, ba chiar și oboseala călătoriilor, suntem plini de maliție față de ispitele dependenței ce se ascund în onoruri, bani, îndatoriri ori plăceri ale simțurilor; ne arătăm recunoscători chiar și pentru greutăți și pentru sănătatea șchioapă, deoarece ne-au eliberat întotdeauna de o anumită "regulă" și de prejudecata ei, suntem recunoscători zeului, diavolului, oii și omizii din noi, curioși până la greșeală, cercetători până la cruzime, avem degete ce se întind netemătoare spre incomprehensibil, dinți și stomacuri pentru ceea ce e de nedigerat, suntem pregătiți pentru orice risc mulțumită unui exces de "voință liberă", avem sufletele din față și din spate vizând un țel suprem care nu-i e limpede nimănui, un fundal și o avanscenă pe care nici un pictor nu le poate străbate, ascunse sub mantia lumii, suntem cuceritori, chiar dacă semănăm cu niște fii risipitori, adunători și culegători de dimineața până seara, suntem avari cu bogățiile noastre, cu sipetele umplute până la refuz, cu ceea ce învățăm și uităm, suntem inventivi la stabilirea principiilor, uneori mândri de tabelele categoriilor, uneori pedanți, uneori bufnițe muncitoare, chiar și la lumina zilei; da, putem fi niște sperietori dacă e nevoie, căci ne iubim din naștere, cu gelozie și încrâncenare singurătatea, cea mai profundă singurătate de la miezul nopții și din miezul zilei. Oameni de felul acesta suntem noi, spiritele libere! Și poate că și voi sunteți așa, voi, care vă apropiați? Voi, noii filozofi?

We can start with approximately nine traditional authors of the New Testament. If we consider the critical thesis that other authors wrote the pastoral letters and such letters as Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians, we'd have an even larger number. Another twenty early Christian authors20 and four heretical writings mention Jesus within 150 years of his death on the cross.21 Moreover, nine secular, non-Christian sources mention Jesus within the 150 years: Josephus, the Jewish historian; Tacitus, the Roman historian; Pliny the Younger, a politician of Rome; Phlegon, a freed slave who wrote histories; Lucian, the Greek satirist; Celsus, a Roman philosopher; and probably the historians Suetonius and Thallus, as well as the prisoner Mara Bar-Serapion.22 In all, at least forty-two authors, nine of them secular, mention Jesus within 150 years of his death. In comparison, let's take a look at Julius Caesar, one of Rome's most prominent figures. Caesar is well known for his military conquests. After his Gallic Wars, he made the famous statement, "I came, I saw, I conquered." Only five sources report his military conquests: writings by Caesar himself, Cicero, Livy, the Salona Decree, and Appian.23 If Julius Caesar really made a profound impact on Roman society, why didn't more writers of antiquity mention his great military accomplishments? No one questions whether Julius did make a tremendous impact on the Roman Empire. It is evident that he did. Yet in those 150 years after his death, more non-Christian authors alone comment on Jesus than all of the sources who mentioned Julius Caesar's great military conquests within 150 years of his death. Let's look at an even better example, a contemporary of Jesus. Tiberius Caesar was the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus' ministry and execution. Tiberius is mentioned by ten sources within 150 years of his death: Tacitus, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Seneca, Valerius Maximus, Josephus, and Luke.24 Compare that to Jesus' forty-two total sources in the same length of time. That's more than four times the number of total sources who mention the Roman emperor during roughly the same period. If we only considered the number of secular non-Christian sources who mention Jesus and Tiberius within 150 years of their lives, we arrive at a tie of nine each.25