One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
QUINTILIANOne thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
More Quintilian Quotes
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While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. The opportunity is lost.
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It is much easier to try one’s hand at many things than to concentrate one’s powers on one thing.
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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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For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
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A Woman who is generous with her money is to be praised; not so, if she is generous with her person.
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Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
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Too exact, and studious of similitude rather than of beauty.
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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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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.
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We should not speak so that it is possible for the audience to understand us, but so that it is impossible for them to misunderstand us.
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Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
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A religion without mystics is a philosophy.
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One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
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Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.
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The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
QUINTILIAN