Pliny the Elder

"Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep."

"With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man."

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

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

"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 upon as quite impossible until they have actually been effected?"

"It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it be, pays any regard to human affairs."

"ruinis inminentibus musculi praemigrant..."

"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."

"Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough."

"All men possess in their bodies a poison which acts upon serpents; and the human saliva, it is said, makes them take to flight, as though they had been touched with boiling water. The same substance, it is said, destroys them the moment it enters their throat."

"The only certainty is that nothing is certain. (Fuller version: This series of instances entangles unforeseeing mortality, so that among these things but one thing is in the least certain—that nothing certain exists, and that nothing is more pitiable, or more presnmptuous, than man! In Latin: Quae singula inprovidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista vel certu(m) sit nihil esse certi nec quicquam miserius homine aut superbius. Some sources have "certu", others "certum".)"

"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."