Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
QuintilianRead
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that those who speak evil are like those who do evil; the difference lies in their opportunity to act.
Quintilian's quote illustrates a profound observation about human nature, emphasizing that the intent to harm or speak ill of others exists in many individuals, but only some possess the opportunity to act on these darker impulses. It serves as a reminder that evil thoughts can reside within, and the absence of action does not absolve one from their moral implications.
Themes
EvilOpportunityHuman NatureSpeechMorality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a debate about free speech versus hate speech.
More from Quintilian
All quotes βAs regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
QuintilianRead
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
QuintilianRead
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
QuintilianRead
It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
QuintilianRead
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
QuintilianRead
Similar quotes
Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.
John CalvinRead
If you read the 13th Amendment, it doesn't talk about narratives of racial difference. It doesn't talk about ideologies of white supremacy. It only talks about involuntary servitude and forced labor.
Bryan StevensonRead
For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.
Carl SaganRead
I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.
Viola DavisRead
To all earth's creatures God has given the broad earth, the springs, the rivers and the forests, giving the air to the birds, and the waters to those who live in water, giving abundantly to all the basic needs of life, not as a private possession, not restricted by law, not divided by boundaries, but as common to all, amply and in rich measure.
Gregory Of NazianzusRead
When my father started talking about strip mining in the Appalachia back in the '60s, I remember a conversation I had with him where he said, you know, this is the richest state in the country if you look at the resources and the land, but the poorest people after the state of Mississippi: the 49th poorest people in the country.
Robert Kennedy, Jr.Read