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It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.

Quintilian

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
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
QUINTILIAN

Beginning Deliberate Growth
A liar should have a good memory.
QUINTILIAN

Goodness Lying Memory
One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
QUINTILIAN

Goal Perspective Possible
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
When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
QUINTILIAN

Advantage Hope Protection Win
While we ponder when to begin, it becomes too late to do.
QUINTILIAN

Action Beginning Late
A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
QUINTILIAN

Accompany Average Impression Support
Medicine for the dead is too late.
QUINTILIAN

Death Medicine One Liner
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
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
QUINTILIAN

Examination Expectation 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
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
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
QUINTILIAN

Capacity Writing
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
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
QUINTILIAN

Art Hide Perfection

It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.

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It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.

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Popular Authors

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