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One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

Quintilian

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

Poet Quick Writing Yourself
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
It is the heart which inspires eloquence.
QUINTILIAN

Heart Inspirational One Liner
For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
QUINTILIAN

Easy Mindset Teaching
Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.
QUINTILIAN

Afflict Sense Suffering
Medicine for the dead is too late.
QUINTILIAN

Death Medicine One Liner
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. The opportunity is lost.
QUINTILIAN

Beginning Lost Mindset Opportunity Time
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
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
Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.
QUINTILIAN

Deep Please
While we ponder when to begin, it becomes too late to do.
QUINTILIAN

Action Beginning Late
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
It is much easier to try one’s hand at many things than to concentrate one’s powers on one thing.
QUINTILIAN

Easy Hand Oneself Power Try
One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
QUINTILIAN

Assistance Capacity Natural Rule
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
QUINTILIAN

Exception Honor Man Necessary
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

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

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One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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