[30]
Therefore, whether we be in a crowd, on a journey,
or even at some festive gathering, our thoughts should
always have some inner sanctuary of their own to
which they may retire. Otherwise what shall we
do when we are suddenly called upon to deliver
a set speech in the midst of the forum, with lawsuits in progress on every side, and with the sound
of quarrels and even casual outcries in our ears, if
we need absolute privacy to discover the thoughts
which we jot down upon our tablets? It was for
this reason that Demosthenes, the passionate lover
of seclusion, used to study on the seashore amid the
roar of the breakers that they might teach him not
to be unnerved by the uproar of the public assembly.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.