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A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

Quintilian

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

Alone Desire Excite Feeling Law
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
QUINTILIAN

Ourselves Verse
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
A Woman who is generous with her money is to be praised; not so, if she is generous with her person.
QUINTILIAN

Generosity Herself Money Person Woman
Study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
QUINTILIAN

Compulsion Goodness Secure Study
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
QUINTILIAN

Difficult Excuse Ourselves
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
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
QUINTILIAN

Examination Expectation Time
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
QUINTILIAN

Evil Himself Opportunity Talk
Medicine for the dead is too late.
QUINTILIAN

Death Medicine One Liner
Conscience is a thousand witnesses.
QUINTILIAN

Conscience One Liner Perspective Spirituality
Although virtue receives some of its excellencies from nature, yet it is perfected by education.
QUINTILIAN

Excellence Nature Perfection Virtue
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
QUINTILIAN

Gift Natural Rule Technical
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
A man who tries to surpass another may perhaps succeed in equaling in not actually surpassing him, but one who merely follows can never quite come up with him: a follower, necessarily, is always behind.
QUINTILIAN

Equality Follow Himself Man Quite Success
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
QUINTILIAN

Cost Expense Laughter Virtue

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

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A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

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