A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
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.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
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.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Satiety is a neighbor to continued pleasures.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Nothing can be pleasing which is not also becoming.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
– Marcus Fabius Quintilian
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
– Marcus Fabius 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.
– Marcus Fabius 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.