Quintilian famous quotes

Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
-- Quintilian

#Procrastination #Too Late #Grows

Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
-- Quintilian

#Writing #Wells

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.
-- Quintilian

#Writing #Impossible #Should

Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.
-- Quintilian

#Writing #Language #Introducing

A liar should have a good memory.
-- Quintilian

#Motivational #Memories #Honesty

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

#Father #Pregnancy #Parent

While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.
-- Quintilian

#Opportunity #Mind #Lost

Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
-- Quintilian

#Life #Food #Mind

The perfection of art is to conceal art.
-- Quintilian

#Art #Perfection #Art Is

Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
-- Quintilian

#Ends

A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
-- Quintilian

#Training #Speech #Impressive

The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
-- Quintilian

#Mind #Body #Infinite

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
-- Quintilian

#Life #Sloth #Excuse

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
-- Quintilian

#Writing #Impossible #Should

She abounds with lucious faults.
-- Quintilian

#Dating #Faults

Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.
-- Quintilian

#Suffering #Doe #Anticipation

For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
-- Quintilian

#Mind #Easier #Teach

A Woman who is generous with her money is to be praised; not so, if she is generous with her person
-- Quintilian

#Persons #Generous

Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.
-- Quintilian

#Father #Men #Names

Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
-- Quintilian

#Song #Men #Rude

Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
-- Quintilian

#Satire #Verses

It is easier to do many things than to do one thing continuously for a long time.
-- Quintilian

#Long #Easier #Variety

For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
-- Quintilian

#Reason #Comic

It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.
-- Quintilian

#Hands #Trying #Easier

(Slaughter) means blood and iron. [Lat., Coedes videtur significare sanguinem et ferrum.]
-- Quintilian

#War #Mean #Iron

Although virtue receives some of its excellencies from nature, yet it is perfected by education. [Lat., Virtus, etiamsi quosdam impetus a natura sumit, tamen perficienda doctrina est.]
-- Quintilian

#Virtue

To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man. [Lat., In totum jurare, nisi ubi necesse est, gravi viro parum convenit.]
-- Quintilian

#Men #Becoming #Honorable

The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
-- Quintilian

#Soul #Rust #Obscurity

Too exact, and studious of similitude rather than of beauty. [Lat., Nimis in veritate, et similitudinis quam pulchritudinis amantior.]
-- Quintilian

#Beauty #Studious

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues. [Lat., Licet ipsa vitium sit ambitio, frequenter tamen causa virtutem est.]
-- Quintilian

#Ambition #Parent #Vices

Satiety is a neighbor to continued pleasures. [Lat., Continuis voluptatibus vicina satietas.]
-- Quintilian

#Neighbor #Pleasure #Satiety

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish. [Lat., Qui stultis videri eruditi volunt, stulti eruditis videntur.]
-- Quintilian

#Wise #Wish #Fool

Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy.
-- Quintilian

#Ambition #Boys #Giving

Minds that are stupid and incapable of science are in the order of nature to be regarded as monsters and other extraordinary phenomena; minds of this sort are rare. Hence I conclude that there are great resources to be found in children, which are suffered to vanish with their years. It is evident, therefore, that it is not of nature, but of our own negligence, we ought to complain.
-- Quintilian

#Education #Children #Stupid

The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.
-- Quintilian

#Art #Reason #Pleasure

When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
-- Quintilian

#Winning #Yield #Advantage

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
-- Quintilian

#Experience #Valuable

It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
-- Quintilian

#Memories #Liars #Lying

When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
-- Quintilian

#Hard Work #Yield #Defeat

Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.
-- Quintilian

#Mother #Ambition #May

Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
-- Quintilian

#Dream #Hope #Vain

For all the best teachers pride themselves on having a large number of pupils and think themselves worthy of a bigger audience.
-- Quintilian

#Teacher #Learning #Pride

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
-- Quintilian

#Useless #Natural

Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
-- Quintilian

#Broken Heart #Evil #Broken Promises

Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
-- Quintilian

Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
-- Quintilian

#Desire #Pleasure #Forbidden

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

#Agriculture #Soil #Students

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

#Men #Dumb #Void

It is worth while too to warn the teacher that undue severity in correcting faults is liable at times to discourage a boy's mind from effort.
-- Quintilian

#Teacher #Boys #Effort

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
-- Quintilian

#Reading #Book #Mind

The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice.
-- Quintilian

#Character #Mind #Matter

It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
-- Quintilian

#Children #Nurse #Firsts

He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
-- Quintilian

#Opportunity #Evil #Doe

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
-- Quintilian

#Laughing #Too Much #Cost

God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech.
-- Quintilian

#Powerful #Character #Men

Study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
-- Quintilian

#Teaching #Quality #Students

A liar ought to have a good memory.
-- Quintilian

#Memories #Liars #Army

Those who wish to appear learned to fools, appear as fools to the learned.
-- Quintilian

#Hypocrisy #Wish #Fool

In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
-- Quintilian

#Journey #Ideas #Crowds

A great part of art consists in imitation. For the whole conduct of life is based on this: that what we admire in others we want to do ourselves.
-- Quintilian

#Art #Want #Life Is

Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
-- Quintilian

#Men #Sudden Change #Fortune

There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught.
-- Quintilian

#Pride #Taught

A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equaling inot actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.
-- Quintilian

#Men #Trying #May

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
-- Quintilian

#Boys #Imagination #Giving

Sayings designed to raise a laugh are generally untrue and never complimentary. Laughter is never far removed from derision.
-- Quintilian

#Laughter #Laughing #Raises

An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
-- Quintilian

#Opportunity #Evil #Want

Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
-- Quintilian

#Fortune #Fear Of The Future

Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
-- Quintilian

#Friendship #Jest #Maxims

By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.
-- Quintilian

#Writing #Writing Well #Wells

The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
-- Quintilian

#Obscurity #Incapacity #Proportion

Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
-- Quintilian

#Father #Ambition #May

While we ponder when to begin, it becomes too late to do.
-- Quintilian

#Too Late #Pondering

It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
-- Quintilian

#Maturity #Genius

While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
-- Quintilian

#Sometimes #Expected

From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.
-- Quintilian

#Writing #Doe #Results

That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
-- Quintilian

#Perfection

Men of quality are in the wrong to undervalue, as they often do, the practise of a fair and quick hand in writing; for it is no immaterial accomplishment.
-- Quintilian

#Writing #Men #Hands

One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
-- Quintilian

#Natural #Efficacy #Capacity

The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.
-- Quintilian

#Faults #Brilliant #Excellent

It is the heart which inspires eloquence.
-- Quintilian

#Heart #Inspire #Eloquence

If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
-- Quintilian

#Work #Eye #Mind

The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
-- Quintilian

#Ideas #Misery #Form

That which offends the ear will not easily gain admission to the mind.
-- Quintilian

#Inspirational #Mind #Ears

A liar must have a good memory. -Mendacem oportet esse memorem
-- Quintilian

#Memories #Liars #Good Memories

Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.
-- Quintilian

#Becoming

Lately we have had many losses.
-- Quintilian

#Loss

Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.
-- Quintilian

#Finishing #Virtue