A biography for Quintilianhasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.”
“In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.”
“That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.”
“The perfection of art is to conceal art.”
“To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.”
“Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.”
“A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.”
“We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.”
“He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.”
“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.”
“It is much easier to try one's hand at many things than to concentrate one's powers on one thing.”
“Though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often times the cause of virtues.”
“To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.”
“Verse satire indeed is entirely our own.”
“Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.”