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We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

Quintilian

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
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
The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.
QUINTILIAN

Art Feeling Learning Pleasure Reason Understand
If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
QUINTILIAN

Direct Eyes Mindset Reach Work
It is easier to do many things than to do one thing continuously for a long time.
QUINTILIAN

Different Easy Time
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
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
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
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
(Slaughter) means blood and iron.
QUINTILIAN

Blood Death Iron
When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
QUINTILIAN

Advantage Hope Protection Win
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
QUINTILIAN

Gift Natural Rule Technical
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
QUINTILIAN

Criticism Development Imagination Mindset Promise
Medicine for the dead is too late.
QUINTILIAN

Death Medicine One Liner
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.
QUINTILIAN

Better Born Destruction Dumb Man Neighbor Reason

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

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We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

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