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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

There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught.
QUINTILIAN

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

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

Alone Desire Excite Feeling Law
Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
QUINTILIAN

Poet Quick Writing Yourself
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
QUINTILIAN

Form Mindset Reading Wide
While we ponder when to begin, it becomes too late to do.
QUINTILIAN

Action Beginning Late
Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
QUINTILIAN

Change Greatness Nature
Too exact, and studious of similitude rather than of beauty.
QUINTILIAN

Beautiful Exact Similar
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.
QUINTILIAN

Gift Natural Rule Technical
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
The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
QUINTILIAN

Easy Ideas Misery Prosperity Right
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
One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
QUINTILIAN

Goal Perspective Possible
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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