[18]
It is above all things necessary that our future orator, who will have to live
in the utmost publicity and in the broad daylight of
public life, should become accustomed from his
childhood to move in society without fear and
habituated to a life far removed from that of the
pale student, the solitary and recluse. His mind
requires constant stimulus and excitement, whereas
retirement such as has just been mentioned induces
languor and the mind becomes mildewed like things
that are left in the dark, or else flies to the opposite
extreme and becomes puffed up with empty conceit;
for he who has no standard of comparison by which
to judge his own powers will necessarily rate them
too high.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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