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.

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

Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.

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

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

The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.

Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.

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 perfection of art is to conceal art.

Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.

Those who wish to appear learned to fools, appear as fools to the learned.

In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.

Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.

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.

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

A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.