Quotes By Quintilian

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

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

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

Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

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

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

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.

Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.

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

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

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

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

Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.

To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.

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.

As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.

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

Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.

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

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

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

A liar should have a good memory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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