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
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
Interpretation
Natural talent is essential for effectively applying technical knowledge.
Quintilian's quote emphasizes the importance of innate abilities in conjunction with learned skills. While technical rules and knowledge can provide a framework, without the natural gifts or talents to utilize them, such rules become ineffective. This highlights the balance between education and inherent aptitude in achieving mastery in any field.
In practice
During a speech on education, one could use this quote to underline the necessity of nurturing talent alongside teaching technical skills.
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.
Books should be right up there with exercise and diet as something that don't just entertain us but heal us. They tell us we are not alone and fix the pieces of us that can be shattered by reality. They are teachers, and they are friends, and we should never contemplate a world - or a life - without them.
Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.
I am terminally sentimental about graduations. They are more individual than weddings, more conscious than christenings, or bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs. They are almost as much a step into the unknown as funerals-though I assure you, there is life after graduation.
The reason I still work at this stage of life is because I enjoy learning something new each day.
Libraries have had a long history of dealing with authoritarian organizations demanding reader records - who's read what - and this has led to people being rounded up and killed.
A college degree is the key to realizing the American dream, well worth the financial sacrifice because it is supposed to open the door to a world of opportunity.
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