Quintilian

A liar should have a good memory.

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

Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.

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

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

That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.

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

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.

Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.

The mind is exercised by the variety and multiplicity of the subject matter, while the character is moulded by the contemplation of virtue and vice.

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.

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

When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.

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

Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech.

Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.

When we cannot hope to win, it is an advantage to yield.

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

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

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.