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

Quintilian

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
Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.
QUINTILIAN

Deep Please
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
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
QUINTILIAN

Gift Natural Rule Technical
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
QUINTILIAN

Difference Evil Opportunity
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
One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
QUINTILIAN

Goal Perspective Possible
Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
QUINTILIAN

Adopt Friendship Ourselves
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.
QUINTILIAN

Impossible Misunderstand Possible Talk Understand
It is easier to do many things than to do one thing continuously for a long time.
QUINTILIAN

Different Easy Time
The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
QUINTILIAN

Easy Ideas Misery Prosperity Right
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
QUINTILIAN

Arrival Genius Maturity
Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.
QUINTILIAN

Beginning Herself Learning Nature Touch Virtue
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
QUINTILIAN

Examination Expectation Time
For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Better Comic Reason Worst Writing

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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