Pliny the Elder: Man

“It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.”

“With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.”

“Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she [Nature] abandon to cries and lamentations.”

“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.”

“The world, and whatever that be which we call the heavens, by the vault of which all things are enclosed, we must conceive to be a deity, to be eternal, without bounds, neither created nor subject at any time to destruction. To inquire what is beyond it is no concern of man; nor can the human mind form any conjecture concerning it.”

“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.”