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