We listen with deep interest to what we hear, for to man novelty is ever charming.
Their best and most wholesome feeding is upon one dish and no more and the same plaine and simple: for surely this hudling of many meats one upon another of divers tastes is pestiferous. But sundrie sauces are more dangerous than that.
It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man.
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.
Nothing is so unequal as equality.
Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.
Let not things, because they are common, enjoy for that the less share of our consideration.
Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked up on as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?
Wine takes away reason, engenders insanity, leads to thousands of crimes, and imposes such an enormous expense on nations.
The feasant hens of Colchis, which have two ears as it were consisting of feathers, which they will set up and lay down as they list.
The brain is the citadel of sense perception.
Cats too, with what silent stealthiness, with what light steps do they creep up to a bird!
A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection upon the buyer’s judgment.
The master’s eye is the best fertilizer.
The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.
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.
Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?
As touching peaches in general, the very name in Latine whereby they are called Persica, doth evidently show that they were brought out of Persia first.
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 season; while there is a third precept which reminds us that opportunities lost can never be regained.
Cincinnatus was ploughing his four jugera of land upon the Vaticanian Hill, the same that are still known as the Quintian Meadows, when the messenger brought him the dictatorship, finding him, the tradition says, stripped to the work.