Quotes by Marcus Quintilian

• The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.
• While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
• The perfection of art is to conceal art.
• To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
• The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
• Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
• Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
• Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
• We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
• Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
• While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.
• The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
• Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
• We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
• He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
• A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
• A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.
• Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
• Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
• Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
• 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.
• 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.
• That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
• In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
• It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
• It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
• 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.
• Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.