Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
QuintilianRead
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
Interpretation
Natural talent is essential for effectively applying technical knowledge.
Quintilian's quote emphasizes the importance of innate abilities in conjunction with learned skills. While technical rules and knowledge can provide a framework, without the natural gifts or talents to utilize them, such rules become ineffective. This highlights the balance between education and inherent aptitude in achieving mastery in any field.
In practice
During a speech on education, one could use this quote to underline the necessity of nurturing talent alongside teaching technical skills.
Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
I'd teach them to read and to dream and to look at the stars and wonder. I'd teach them the value of imagination. I'd teach them to play every bit as hard as they worked. And I'd teach them that all the brains in the world can't compensate for love.
The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.
At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.
Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life.
Obviously, I want my kids to be happy, and I believe that they can be super successful at whatever they want to do, but don't make the successful part more important than the process of doing it. Especially if it's an artistic endeavor.
It is the function of a liberal university not to give right answers, but to ask right questions.
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