Petronius, Satyricon 47:

“Pardon me, friends. My stomach has not been well for days, and the doctors don’t know what they’re about. Yet, pomegranate and pine with vinegar have done me good. Yet, I hope that my bowels will resume their old sense of shame. Otherwise, my stomach will sound so loud that you’d think it was a bull! So, if any of you wish to attend to personal business, don’t feel ashamed. No one of us is solidly born, and I think that there is no greater torment than to hold it in. Farting is the one thing which even Jupiter cannot forbid. I see you laughing, Fortunata, but you often wake me up at night with your blasts. So, I don’t forbid anyone in the dining room to do what will come as a relief, and doctors urge us not to hold it in. And, if anything more than just a fart should come upon you, everything is ready outside: water, some pots, and other accessories. Believe me, if a vapor wafts up into your brain, it will make a wave in your entire body. I know that many have died because they did not wish to speak the truth.”

“Ignoscite mihi, inquit, amici, multis iam diebus venter mihi non respondit. Nec medici se inveniunt. Profuit mihi tamen maleicorium et taeda ex aceto. Spero tamen, iam veterem pudorem sibi imponet. Alioquin circa stomachum mihi sonat, putes taurum. Itaque si quis vestrum voluerit sua re causa facere, non est quod illum pudeatur. Nemo nostrum solide natus est. Ego nullum puto tam magnum tormentum esse quam continere. Hoc solum vetare ne Iovis potest. Rides, Fortunata, quae soles me nocte desomnem facere? Nec tamen in triclinio ullum vetuo facere quod se iuvet, et medici vetant continere. Vel si quid plus venit, omnia foras parata sunt: aqua, lasani et cetera minutalia. Credite mihi, anathymiasis si in cerebrum it, et in toto corpore fluctum facit. Multos scio periisse, dum nolunt sibi verum dicere.”

David Hume, Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing:

“We may also observe, that those compositions, which we read the oftenest, and which every man of taste has got by heart, have the recommendation of simplicity, and have nothing surprizing in the thought, when divested of that elegance of expression, and harmony of numbers, with which it is cloathed. If the merit of the composition lie in a point of wit; it may strike at first; but the mind anticipates the thought in the second perusal, and is no longer affected by it. When I read an epigram of MARTIAL, the first line recalls the whole; and I have no pleasure in repeating to myself what I know already. But each line, each word in CATULLUS, has its merit; and I am never tired with the perusal of him. It is sufficient to run over COWLEY once: But PARNEL, after the fiftieth reading, is as fresh as at the first. Besides, it is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel, which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. TERENCE is a modest and bashful beauty, to whom we grant every thing, because he assumes nothing, and whose purity and nature make a durable, though not a violent impression on us.

But refinement, as it is the less beautiful, so is it the more dangerous extreme, and what we are the aptest to fall into. Simplicity passes for dulness, when it is not accompanied with great elegance and propriety. On the contrary, there is something surprizing in a blaze of wit and conceit. Ordinary readers are mightily struck with it, and falsely imagine it to be the most difficult, as well as most excellent way of writing. SENECA abounds with agreeable faults, says QUINTILIAN, abundat dulcibus vitiis; and for that reason is the more dangerous, and the more apt to pervert the taste of the young and inconsiderate.”

Seneca, Epistulae ad Lucilium 1.7:

“You ask me what I think chiefly to be avoided? A crowd. You cannot yet be safely entrusted to it. I will certainly confess my own weakness: I never bring back the habits which I took with me. Something which I previously ordered is disturbed, something which I previously banished simply returns. As it happens with the sick, whom a long illness has affected to such a degree that they can no longer go out without harm, so it happens with us whose minds are recovering from a long disease. Association with many people is a hateful thing: in the crowd, there is no one who will not commend his vice to us, or even impress and smear it upon us without our knowing. In every case, the greater the crowd with whom we mingle, the greater the danger. But nothing is so dangerous to good morals as to loiter around at a show, where our vices steal upon us all the more readily on account of their pleasure. What do you think I am saying? That I come back more avaricious, ambitious, and prone to luxury? Nay, rather, I return more cruel and inhumane because I have been among humans.”

Quid tibi vitandum praecipue existimes quaeris? turbam. Nondum illi tuto committeris. Ego certe confitebor imbecillitatem meam: numquam mores quos extuli refero; aliquid ex eo quod composui turbatur, aliquid ex iis quae fugavi redit. Quod aegris evenit quos longa imbecillitas usque eo affecit ut nusquam sine offensa proferantur, hoc accidit nobis quorum animi ex longo morbo reficiuntur. [2] Inimica est multorum conversatio: nemo non aliquod nobis vitium aut commendat aut imprimit aut nescientibus allinit. Utique quo maior est populus cui miscemur, hoc periculi plus est. Nihil vero tam damnosum bonis moribus quam in aliquo spectaculo desidere; tunc enim per voluptatem facilius vitia subrepunt. [3] Quid me existimas dicere? avarior redeo, ambitiosior, luxuriosior? immo vero crudelior et inhumanior, quia inter homines fui.