[16]
Nay,
even those pleasantries in which we indulge on
certain occasions of festive licence (and to which we
give the name of mots,1 as, indeed, they are), if only
a little more good sense were employed in their
[p. 447]
invention, and they were seasoned by a slight admixture of seriousness, might afford a most useful
training. As it is, they serve merely to divert the
young and merrymakers.
1 The meaning of this passage is not clear, and no satisfactory explanation or correction has been suggested.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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.