Quintilian Quotes

A liar should have a good memory.
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

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

For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
Quintilian

It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.
Quintilian

It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
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

Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
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

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.
Quintilian

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
Quintilian

Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
Quintilian

When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
Quintilian

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

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
Quintilian