Words matter. These are the best Quintilian Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
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.
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
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.
Fear of the future is worse than one’s present fortune.
The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin, the opportunity is lost.
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
A liar should have a good memory.
A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.
Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.
Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
It is much easier to try one’s hand at many things than to concentrate one’s powers on one thing.
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.
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
