Quintilian

Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.

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

A liar should have a good memory.

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

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.

While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin, the opportunity is lost.

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

While we ponder when to begin, it becomes too late to do.

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.

As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.

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.

The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.

When defeat is inevitable it is wisest to yield.

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

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.

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.

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

Nature herself has never attempted to effect great changes rapidly.

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