Quintilian (c.35–c.100 CE,) properly Marcus Fabius Quintillanus, was a Roman rhetorician. His Institutio oratoria is the most significant work on education and the most extensive compilation on classical rhetoric from Roman antiquity.
Born in Calagurris, now Calahorra, Spain, he studied oratory under the orator Domitius Afer and the grammarian Remmius Palaemon at Rome, and returned there in 68 CE in the retinue of Emperor Galba. He became renowned as a pleader, and still more as a state teacher of the oratorical art, his pupils including Pliny the Younger and the two great-nephews of Emperor Domitian. The emperor named him consul and gave him a pension.
Quintilian’s repute rests on his great work Institutio oratoria (‘Education of an Orator,’) a comprehensive system of rhetoric in twelve books. It is noteworthy for its sound critical judgments, purity of taste, admirable form, and the complete familiarity it exhibits with the literature of oratory. Quintilian’s style is excellent, though not devoid of the florid ornament and lyrical metaphor representative of his age.
Quintilian encouraged his readers to relate the styles of rhetoric and the visual arts by using a discussion of the concept of style in painting and sculpture to explicate technique in rhetoric. In this sense, his comments on the history of art are among the most important by any writer of antiquity.
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Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
—Quintilian
Topics: Mind, The Mind
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
—Quintilian
Topics: Difficulty, Excuses
Though ambition may be a fault in itself, it is often the mother of virtues.
—Quintilian
Topics: Ambition
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
—Quintilian
Topics: Style, Writers
Premature development of the powers of both mind and body leads to an early grave.
—Quintilian
Topics: Talent
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
—Quintilian
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists
The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.
—Quintilian
Topics: Art
Those who wish to appear wise among fools among the wise seem foolish.
—Quintilian
Topics: Fools
If you direct your whole thought to work itself, none of the things which invade eyes or ears will reach the mind.
—Quintilian
Topics: Focus, Concentration
That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency.
—Quintilian
Topics: Laughter
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
—Quintilian
Topics: Reading
Though ambition itself is a vice, it is often the parent of virtues.
—Quintilian
Topics: Ambition
Ambition is a vice, but it may be the father of virtue.
—Quintilian
Topics: Ambition, One liners
We make a pretext of difficulty to excuse our sloth.
—Quintilian
Topics: Laziness
Without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
—Quintilian
Topics: Ability
Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the anticipation of suffering.
—Quintilian
Topics: Anticipation
A great part of art consists in imitation. For the whole conduct of life is based on this: that what we admire in others we want to do ourselves.
—Quintilian
When defeat is inevitable, it is wisest to yield.
—Quintilian
Topics: Defeat
Other parts of the body assist the speaker but the hands speak themselves.—By them we ask, promise, invoke, dismiss, threaten, entreat, deprecate.—By them we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, assent, or penitence; we show moderation or profusion, and mark number and time.
—Quintilian
Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.
—Quintilian
Topics: Politics, Politicians, Just for Fun
Let us never adopt the maxim, Rather lose our friend than our jest.
—Quintilian
Topics: Friendship
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