There is no doubt about the truth of the proverb that a liar should have a good memory.
Quintilian
Tag: Quote of the Day
21NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
However manifold our activities, in a certain sense we come fresh to each new subject. Who can maintain his attention, if he has to listen for a whole day to one teacher harping on the same subject, be it what it may? Change of studies is like change of foods: the stomach is refreshed by their variety and derives greater nourishment from variety of viands.
Quintilian
20NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
Nature herself, indeed, seems to have given music to us as a benefit, to enable us to endure labors with greater facility, for musical sounds cheer even the rower; and it is not only in those works in which the efforts of many, while some pleasing voice leads them, conspire together that music is of avail, but the toil even of people at work by themselves finds itself soothed by song, however rude.
Quintilian
19NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
We give to necessity the praise of virtue.
Quintilian
18NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation,—amicably if they can, violently if they must.
Regarding the admission of Orleans Territory as a U.S. State. Abridged Cong. Debates, Jan. 14, 1811. Vol. iv. p. 327. This was later famously paraphrased by Henry Clay: The gentleman [Mr. Quincy] cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, “Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.” Speech, Jan. 8, 1813.
Josiah Quincy III
17NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
16NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
All the old statues of Victory have wings: but Grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not move or be dislodged.
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
15NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or ‘appreciate.’ For the function of the anthologist includes criticizing in silence.
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I am mistaken if a single epigram included fails to preserve at least some faint thrill of the emotion through which it had to pass before the Muse’s lips let it fall, with however exquisite deliberation.
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The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out and insert the second-rate merely because it happened to be recondite.
Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
14NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
To secure the greatest amount of pleasure with the least possible outlay should be the aim of all economic effort… when everyone does this the natural order, instead of being endangered, will be all the better assured.
François Quesnay
13NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
Calculations are to the economic science what bones are to the human body. Without them it will always be a vague and confused science, at the mercy of error and prejudice.
François Quesnay