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
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
Interpretation
Nature offers a limitless array of gifts, and each person's mind is as unique as their physical form.
Quintilian emphasizes the vast diversity of natural gifts and highlights the individual differences in human minds, suggesting that just as our bodies vary, so too do our thoughts, perspectives, and intellects. This quote invites reflection on the richness of both nature and human experience, encouraging appreciation for the unique contributions each person can make to the world.
In practice
To illustrate the beauty of individuality in a speech about personal development.
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.
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average the total walking of an American these days - that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls - adds up to 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day.
There is not the least flower but seems to hold up its head, and to look pleasantly, in the secret sense of the goodness of its Heavenly Maker.
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.
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