He [Pliny the Elder] used to say that 'no book [etc] was so bad but some good might be got out of it'.

They enhance the value of their favors by the words with which they are accompanied.

In the pleading of cases nothing pleases so much as brevity.

The living voice is that which sways the soul.

That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.

The erection of a monument is superfluous, our memory will endure if our lives have deserved it.

Let us strive the more earnestly therefore to lengthen out our span of life-- life that is poured out like water and falls as the leaf-- if not by action (the means to which lie in another's power), yet in any case by study and research; and since it is not granted us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived.