Quotes By Quintilian

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.

Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.

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

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

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

When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.

Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

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.

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.

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

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.

Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.

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

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

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

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

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.

That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.

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

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

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.

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.

A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.

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.