Top 83 Quintilian Quotes
#1. A liar should have a good memory. - Quintilian, Institutions Oratoriae, iv. 2, 91
Jodi Picoult
#2. The perfection of art is to conceal art.
Quintilian
#3. 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
#4. The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
Quintilian
#5. While we ponder when to begin, it becomes too late to do.
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#7. In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
Quintilian
#8. We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
Quintilian
#9. Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.
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#10. It is the heart which inspires eloquence.
Quintilian
#11. While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
Quintilian
#12. Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
Quintilian
#13. To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
Quintilian
#15. 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
#16. Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
Quintilian
#17. A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
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#18. Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
Quintilian
#19. The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
Quintilian
#20. An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
Quintilian
#21. 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
#22. To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
Quintilian
#23. We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
Quintilian
#24. 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
#25. Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.
Quintilian
#26. Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
Quintilian
#27. Sayings designed to raise a laugh are generally untrue and never complimentary. Laughter is never far removed from derision.
Quintilian
#28. One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
Quintilian
#29. It is easier to do many things than to do one thing continuously for a long time.
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#30. The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.
Quintilian
#31. That which offends the ear will not easily gain admission to the mind.
Quintilian
#32. When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
Quintilian
#33. Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
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#34. In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
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#35. Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
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#36. Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.
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#37. 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
#38. From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.
Quintilian
#39. Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
Quintilian
#40. That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
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#41. For all the best teachers pride themselves on having a large number of pupils and think themselves worthy of a bigger audience.
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#42. It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
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#43. While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin, the opportunity is lost.
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#45. Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
Quintilian
#46. Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.
Quintilian
#47. A religion without mystics is a philosophy.
Quintilian
#48. 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
#49. Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
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#50. Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
Quintilian
#51. It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
Quintilian
#52. The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
Quintilian
#53. It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.
Quintilian
#54. A liar ought to have a good memory.
Quintilian
#55. Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
Quintilian
#56. 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
#57. Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
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#58. The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.
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#59. It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
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#60. 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.
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#61. For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
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#62. He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
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#63. A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
Quintilian
#64. 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
#65. If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
Quintilian
#66. Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.
Quintilian
#67. For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
Quintilian
#68. Study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
Quintilian
#69. Satiety is a neighbor to continued pleasures.
[Lat., Continuis voluptatibus vicina satietas.]
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#70. A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.
Quintilian
#71. By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.
Quintilian
#72. Conscience is a thousand witnesses.
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#73. 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.
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#74. One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
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#75. Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
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#76. Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.
Quintilian
#77. Usage is the best language teacher.
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#78. When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
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#79. As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
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#80. Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
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#81. Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
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#82. Those who wish to appear learned to fools, appear as fools to the learned.
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#83. 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
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