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

Quintilian

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

Admire Art Consist Greatness Life Ourselves
For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Better Comic Reason Worst Writing
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

Accomplishment Man Quality Value Wrong
There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Teaching
A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equaling in not actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.
QUINTILIAN

Equality Follow Himself Man Quite Success
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
QUINTILIAN

Gift Natural Rule Technical
In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
QUINTILIAN

Crowd Journey Seclusion
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
QUINTILIAN

Arrival Genius Maturity
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

Alone Education Father Myself Parents Possible Regard Restrict
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 Food Nature Poor Stranger Togetherness
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
QUINTILIAN

Evil Himself Opportunity Talk
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

Animal Creation Faculty God Impression Nature Powerful Talk
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
QUINTILIAN

Cost Expense Laughter Virtue
That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
QUINTILIAN

Arrival Lost Perfection Vanish
Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
QUINTILIAN

Change Dangerous Fortune
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

Kind Natural Oneself Separate Soul

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

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

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