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Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.

Quintilian

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

Capacity Writing
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
QUINTILIAN

Examination Expectation Time
Although virtue receives some of its excellencies from nature, yet it is perfected by education.
QUINTILIAN

Excellence Nature Perfection Virtue
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
The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice.
QUINTILIAN

Exercise Mindset Subject Vice Virtue
Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
QUINTILIAN

Ambition Father Vice Virtue
(Slaughter) means blood and iron.
QUINTILIAN

Blood Death Iron
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
QUINTILIAN

Experience Value
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
QUINTILIAN

Alone Desire Excite Feeling Law
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
QUINTILIAN

Difficult Excuse Ourselves
Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
QUINTILIAN

Poet Quick Writing Yourself
Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
QUINTILIAN

Adopt Friendship Ourselves
For all the best teachers pride themselves on having a large number of pupils and think themselves worthy of a bigger audience.
QUINTILIAN

Audience Best Big Pride Teacher Worth
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
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
In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.
QUINTILIAN

Crowd Journey Seclusion

Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.

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Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.

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Popular Authors

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