Quintilian Quotes

40 Sourced Quotes

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

Quintilian
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
In either case the orator should bear clearly in mind throughout his whole speech what the fiction is to which he has committed himself, since we are apt to forget our falsehoods, and there is no doubt about the truth of the proverb that a liar should have a good memory.

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

Quintilian
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
A Woman who is generous with her money is to be praised; not so, if she is generous with her person

Quintilian
The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.

Quintilian
Nature herself, indeed, seems to have given music to us as a benefit, to enable us to endure labors with greater facility, for musical sounds cheer even the rower; and it is not only in those works in which the efforts of many, while some pleasing voice leads them, conspire together that music is of avail, but the toil even of people at work by themselves finds itself soothed by song, however rude.

Quintilian
Accordingly, the first essential is that those feelings should prevail with us that we wish to prevail with the judge, and that we should be moved ourselves before we attempt to move others.

Quintilian
For it had been better for men to be born dumb and devoid of reason than to turn the gifts of providence to their mutual destruction.

Quintilian
Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy.

Quintilian
A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.

Quintilian
There is nothing more detestable than a man who, because he has learned a little more than the alphabet, thinks that he has been initiated into the deepest secrets of science.

Quintilian
Vain hopes are often like the dreams of those who wake.

Quintilian
Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.

Quintilian
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.

Quintilian
For it is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent.

Quintilian
One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.

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

Quintilian
Yet students must pronounce with diffidence and circumspection on the merits of such illustrious characters, lest, as is the case with many, they condemn what they do not understand.

Quintilian
Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.

Quintilian
The all-important gift of an orator is to respond to change and variety in things.

Quintilian
However many things we may have done, we are yet to a certain degree fresh for that which we are going to begin. Who, on the contrary, would not be stupefied if he were to listen to the same teacher of any art, whatever it might be, through the whole day? But by change a person will be recruited, as is the case with respect to food, by varieties of which the stomach is re-invigorated and is fed with several sorts less unsatisfactorily than with one.

Quintilian