C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Quintilian
Although virtue receives some of its excellencies from nature, yet it is perfected by education.
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.
Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature.
Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy.
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.
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.
Minds that are stupid and incapable of science are in the order of nature to be regarded as monsters and other extraordinary phenomena; minds of this sort are rare. Hence I conclude that there are great resources to be found in children, which are suffered to vanish with their years. It is evident, therefore, that it is not of nature, but of our own negligence, we ought to complain.
Other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these speak themselves. By them we ask, we promise, we invoke, we dismiss, we threaten, we entreat, we deprecate; we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, our assent, our penitence; we show moderation, profusion; we mark number and time.
Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of food, variety supplies both with fresh appetite.
Satiety is a neighbor to continued pleasures.
Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the apprehension of suffering.
That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency.
The learned understand the reason of the art, the unlearned feel the pleasure.
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.