“He used to say that "no book was so bad but that some good might be got out of it."”

—  Pliny the Younger

Letter 5, 10, referring to Pliny the Elder.
Letters, Book III

Original

Dicere etiam solebat nullum esse librum tam malum ut non aliqua parte prodesset..

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He used to say that "no book was so bad but that some good might be got out of it."" by Pliny the Younger?
Pliny the Younger photo
Pliny the Younger 50
Roman writer 61–113

Related quotes

“I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries and more that lie between us. Pliny used to say (you will see it in a translation I have on my shelves) that no book was so bad that some good might be got out of it, and that is my feeling. I – and Pliny – born and bred so differently, feel the same about books and it gives me a flattering sense of rightness – sitting here in this shop among books that Pliny could not have imagined – books written in a language which was not then evolved – the thought makes me feel thrilled. There is no other word for it, but I dare not tell it to anyone. It is an astonishing secret to me that I must enjoy alone.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 30

Lou Gehrig photo

“So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for.”

Lou Gehrig (1903–1941) American baseball player

Speech made on Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at Yankee at Yankee Stadium (July 4, 1939)

Richelle Mead photo

“Too bad you got so bogged down in books. You've got the spirit of a warrior.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Dr. Montague
The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Peter Blake photo

“Brian Sewell is a fool. For some years he seemed to have it in for me and Hockney and Kitaj. Even if he wasn't writing about us he'd always find a way of bringing us in. He'd say, "so and so was a bad artist but not as bad as Hockney, Kitaj or Blake."”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Things like that.
Simon O'Hagan "Credo:Peter Blake", http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20051120/ai_n15851377 The Independent on Sunday, 2005-11-20. Accessed from findarticles.com, 2007-01-22
Life

René Descartes photo

“Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“There is no book so bad," said the bachelor, "but something good may be found in it.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 3.

Tony Abbott photo

“If we’re honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband … you find that he tends to do more good than harm. He might be a bad boss but at least he’s employing someone while he is in fact a boss.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "Tony Abbott under fire" http://www.abc.net.au/am/stories/s596135.htm on abc.net.au, July 22, 2002.
2002

Mariko Tamaki photo

“Books don’t have a nutritional value. Which is to say, we don’t just read "good" books because they’re good for us. We read to expand our horizons, to understand and connect with something outside ourselves, good and bad. We read to challenge ourselves…”

Mariko Tamaki (1975) Canadian writer and artist

On reading books that might be deemed inappropriate in “We Read To Challenge Ourselves: An Interview With Mariko Tamaki” https://comicsalliance.com/mariko-tamaki-pride-week-interview/ in Comics Alliance (2016 Jun 24)

Philip Pullman photo

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

Related topics