Marcus Fabius Quintilian quotes
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.
For comic writers charge Socrates with making the worse appear the better reason.
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.
Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.
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.
He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.
In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.
It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.
It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.
Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.
Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.
One thing, however, I must premise, that without the assistance of natural capacity, rules and precepts are of no efficacy.
Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
Satiety is a neighbor to continued pleasures.
That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.
Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.
Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.