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When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.

Quintilian

It is worth while too to warn the teacher that undue severity in correcting faults is liable at times to discourage a boy’s mind from effort.
QUINTILIAN

Courage Effort Mistake Severe Teacher Worth
Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Fools Virtue Wisdom
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
QUINTILIAN

Capacity Writing
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
QUINTILIAN

Form Mindset Reading Wide
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
QUINTILIAN

Alone Desire Excite Feeling Law
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
Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.
QUINTILIAN

Fear Fortune Future Present
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
QUINTILIAN

Difference Evil Opportunity
Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
QUINTILIAN

Awake Dreams Hope
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
QUINTILIAN

Body Infinite Mindset Nature
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
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
QUINTILIAN

Difficult Excuse Ourselves
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
Lately we have had many losses.
QUINTILIAN

Late Lose One Liner
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
QUINTILIAN

Evil Himself Opportunity Talk
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

When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.

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When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.

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