[16]
But rules are helpful all the
same so long as they indicate the direct road and do
not restrict us absolutely to the ruts made by others.
For he who thinks it an unpardonable sin to leave the
old, old track, must be content to move at much the
same speed as a tight-rope walker. Thus, for example,
we often leave a paved military road to take a short
cut or, finding that the direct route is impossible
owing to floods having broken down the bridges, are
forced to make a circuit, while if our house is on fire
and flames bar the way to the front door, we make
our escape by breaking through a party wall.
Quintilian. With an English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1920.
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.