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Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

Quintilian

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

Change Food Fresh Mindset Stomach
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
QUINTILIAN

Ambition Parent Vice Virtue
Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.
QUINTILIAN

Fear Fortune Future Present
Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
QUINTILIAN

Change Greatness Nature
That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
QUINTILIAN

Arrival Lost Perfection Vanish
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
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
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
QUINTILIAN

Body Infinite Mindset Nature
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
Medicine for the dead is too late.
QUINTILIAN

Death Medicine One Liner
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
Lately we have had many losses.
QUINTILIAN

Late Lose One Liner
It is the heart which inspires eloquence.
QUINTILIAN

Heart Inspirational One Liner
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
QUINTILIAN

Form Mindset Reading Wide
In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
QUINTILIAN

Crowd Journey Seclusion

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

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Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

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