While we ponder when to begin it becomes too late.
Quintilian (39-90) Roman orator [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]
De Institutione Oratoria
Quotations by:
Quintilian, Marcus Fabius
Study depends on the good will of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.
[Studium discendi voluntate, quae cogi non potest, constat.]
Quintilian (39-90) Roman orator [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]
De Institutione Oratoria, Book 3, ch. 8
Don’t write so you can be understood. Write so that you cannot be misunderstood.
Quintilian (39-90) Roman orator [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]
De Institutione Oratoria, Book 8, ch. 2, l. 24
Alt. trans.: "We should not write so that it is possible for [the reader] to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us."
Also attributed to Epictetus, Francis Bacon, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Taft.
For it is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent.
[Pectus est enim, quod disertos facit.]
Quintilian (39-90) Roman orator [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]
De Institutione Oratoria, Book X, ch. 7, l. 15
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
[Maledicus a malefico non distat nisi occasione.]
Quintilian (39-90) Roman orator [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]
De Institutione Oratorio, Book 12, ch. 9, l. 9