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

Quintilian

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

Exception Honor Man Necessary
By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.
QUINTILIAN

Difference Literature Poet Writing
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
QUINTILIAN

Beginning Deliberate Growth
For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Better Comic Reason Worst Writing
It is much easier to try one’s hand at many things than to concentrate one’s powers on one thing.
QUINTILIAN

Easy Hand Oneself Power Try
It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
QUINTILIAN

Children Himself Imitation Nurse
That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
QUINTILIAN

Arrival Lost Perfection Vanish
For all the best teachers pride themselves on having a large number of pupils and think themselves worthy of a bigger audience.
QUINTILIAN

Audience Best Big Pride Teacher Worth
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
QUINTILIAN

Difficult Excuse Ourselves
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 Profit Student Talent Work
Study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
QUINTILIAN

Compulsion Goodness Secure Study
Medicine for the dead is too late.
QUINTILIAN

Death Medicine One Liner
Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
QUINTILIAN

Ambition Father Vice Virtue
When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
QUINTILIAN

Advantage Hope Protection Win
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
QUINTILIAN

Ourselves Verse
From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.
QUINTILIAN

Fast Oneself Result Writing

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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