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Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

Quintilian

Those who wish to appear learned to fools, appear as fools to the learned.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Fools Learning
Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.
QUINTILIAN

Ambition Mistake Mom Virtue
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
QUINTILIAN

Arrival Genius Maturity
As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
QUINTILIAN

Alone Education Father Myself Parents Possible Regard Restrict
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
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
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
QUINTILIAN

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

Death Medicine One Liner
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
QUINTILIAN

Form Mindset Reading Wide
One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
QUINTILIAN

Goal Perspective Possible
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
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
QUINTILIAN

Experience Value
For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
QUINTILIAN

Appearance Better Comic Reason Worst Writing
The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.
QUINTILIAN

Art Feeling Learning Pleasure Reason Understand
Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
QUINTILIAN

Ambition Father Vice Virtue

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

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Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

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