Roman - Author | 23 - 79
The invention of money opened a new field to human avarice by giving rise to usury and the practice of lending money at interest while the owner passes a life of idleness.
Pliny the Elder
LifeMoneyPracticeGivingRiseNew
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
SameCharmPursuitSeldomObject
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.
WithoutComparingMakingWordSome
There is always something new out of Africa.
NewAfricaAlwaysOutSomething
We trace out all the veins of the earth, and yet, living upon it, undermined as it is beneath our feet, are astonished that it should occasionally cleave asunder or tremble: as though, forsooth, these signs could be any other than expressions of the indignation felt by our sacred parent!
FeetParentEarthLivingSignsOut
No mortal man, moreover is wise at all moments.
ManWiseMomentsMortalMoreover
The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.
BestPlanProfitOthersFolly
How innocent, how happy, how truly delightful, even, would life be if we were to desire nothing but what is to be found upon the face of the earth: in a word, nothing but what is provided ready to our hands!
LifeHappyFaceHandsReadyEarth
Man has learned how to challenge both Nature and art to become the incitements to vice! His very cups he has delighted to engrave with libidinous subjects, and he takes pleasure in drinking from vessels of obscene form!
NatureArtChallengeManBecomeHe
Our forefathers regarded as a prodigy the passage of the Alps: first by Hannibal and, more recently, by the Cimbri; but at the present day, these very mountains are cut asunder to yield us a thousand different marbles; promontories are thrown open to the sea; and the face of Nature is being everywhere reduced to a level.
NatureSeaDayMountainsFaceFirst
The world and that which, by another name, men have thought good to call Heaven (under the compass of which all things are covered), we ought to believe, in all reason, to be a divine power, eternal, immense, without beginning, and never to perish.
GoodPowerMenBeginningWorldName
To seek after any shape of God, and to assign a form and image to Him, is a proof of man's folly. For God, whosoever he be (if haply there be any other but the world itself), and in what part soever resident, all sense He is, all sight, all hearing: He is the whole of the life and of the soul, all of Himself.
LifeGodSoulManWorldImage
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