Top 96 Quotes & Sayings by Quintilian
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Roman educator Quintilian.
Last updated on April 13, 2025.
When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
For the mind is all the easier to teach before it is set.
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin, the opportunity is lost.
Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
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.
Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
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.
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.
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 the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.
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.
Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
A liar should have a good memory.
Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.
Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
A great part of art consists in imitation. For the whole conduct of life is based on this: that what we admire in others we want to do ourselves.
Study depends on the goodwill of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
We should not speak so that it is possible for the audience to understand us, but so that it is impossible for them to misunderstand us.
The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.
Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.
Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.
If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught.
A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.
It is the heart which inspires eloquence.
Conscience is a thousand witnesses.
That which offends the ear will not easily gain admission to the mind.
Related Authors
Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes
American
Educator
Bill Nye Quotes
American
Educator
Cornel West Quotes
American
Educator
Dean Ornish Quotes
American
Educator
Horace Mann Quotes
American
Educator
Jeffrey R. Holland Quotes
American
Educator
Jon Kabat-Zinn Quotes
American
Educator
Lucy Maud Montgomery Quotes
Canadian
Educator
Maria Montessori Quotes
Italian
Educator
Michael Pollan Quotes
American
Educator
Paulo Freire Quotes
Brazilian
Educator
Peter Kreeft Quotes
American
Educator
Randy Pausch Quotes
American
Educator
Stephen Covey Quotes
American
Educator
Temple Grandin Quotes
American
Educator
Timothy Leary Quotes
American
Educator