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Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
Quintilian -
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
Quintilian
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As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
Quintilian -
For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
Quintilian -
Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
Quintilian -
A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.
Quintilian -
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
Quintilian -
Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
Quintilian
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For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.
Quintilian -
A liar should have a good memory.
Quintilian -
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
Quintilian -
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
Quintilian -
Quare non ut intellegere possit sed ne omnino possit non intellegere curandum.
Quintilian -
Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
Quintilian
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It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
Quintilian -
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
Quintilian -
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
Quintilian -
Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
Quintilian -
Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
Quintilian -
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
Quintilian
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Vtrubique autem orator meminisse debebit actione tota quid finxerit, quoniam solent excidere quae falsa sunt: verumque est illud quod vulgo dicitur, mendacem memorem esse oportere.
Quintilian -
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin, the opportunity is lost.
Quintilian -
Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
Quintilian -
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
Quintilian