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If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.

Quintilian

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Fools Virtue Wisdom
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
Men of quality are in the wrong to undervalue, as they often do, the practise of a fair and quick hand in writing; for it is no immaterial accomplishment.
QUINTILIAN

Accomplishment Man Quality Value Wrong
Those who wish to appear learned to fools, appear as fools to the learned.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Fools Learning
Medicine for the dead is too late.
QUINTILIAN

Death Medicine One Liner
Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
QUINTILIAN

Adopt Friendship Ourselves
A religion without mystics is a philosophy.
QUINTILIAN

One Liner Philosophy Religion
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
One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
QUINTILIAN

Goal Perspective Possible
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
Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
QUINTILIAN

Ambition Father Vice Virtue
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
QUINTILIAN

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

Difference Evil Opportunity

If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.

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If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.

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