[18]
But it is ourselves that make the time for
study short: for how little time we allot to it!
Some hours are passed in the futile labour of ceremonial calls, others in idle chatter, others in staring
at the shows of the theatre, and others again in
feasting. To this add all the various forms of amusement, the insane attention devoted to the cultivation
of the body, journeys abroad, visits to the country,
anxious calculation of loss and gain, the allurements
of lust, wine-bibbing and those remaining hours
which are all too few to gratify our souls on fire
with passion for every kind of pleasure.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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