This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[3]
Nor can I regard as an error
the assertion that order is essential to the existence
of nature itself, for without order everything would
go to wrack and ruin. Similarly if oratory lack this
virtue, it cannot fail to be confused, but will be
like a ship drifting without a helmsman, will lack
cohesion, will fall into countless repetitions and
omissions, and, like a traveller who has lost his way
in unfamiliar country, will be guided solely by chance
without fixed purpose or the least idea either of
starting-point or goal.
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.