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
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
Interpretation
People tend to crave what is forbidden more than what is allowed.
Quintilian suggests that human desire is often heightened by the allure of the forbidden. When pleasures are deemed unlawful or off-limits, they gain a certain intensity that makes them more appealing, while those pleasures that are easily accessible or permitted often lose their charm and excitement.
In practice
In a speech about the nature of desire, illustrating how what we can't have seems more attractive.
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.
A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.
The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him
Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?
The iron chain and the silken cord are both equally bonds.
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"β here I opened wide the door; β Darkness there, and nothing more.
The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one: ETC.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.