[23]
And, what is more, the orator
will always make good his professions in this respect,
for he will always speak well. On the other hand
this criticism may perhaps hold good as against those
who think persuasion the end of oratory. But our
orator and his art, as we define it, are independent of
results. The speaker aims at victory, it is true, but if
he speaks well, he has lived up to the ideals of his art,
even if he is defeated.
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.