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[92] I think I should also add a few brief words to the effect that not only very different rhetorical virtues have their special admirers, but that they are often praised by the same persons. For instance, there is one passage1 in Cicero where he writes that the best style is that which we think we can easily acquire by imitation, but which we find is really beyond our powers. But in another passage2 he says that his aim was not to speak in such a manner that everyone should be confident that he could do the same, but rather in a style that should be the despair of all.

1 See Or. rxiii. 76. In this and the next passage Quintilian does not quote, but paraphrases.

2 See Or. xxviii. 97.

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