[4]
What pleasure can an orator hope to produce, or what impression even of the most moderate
learning, unless he knows how to fix one point in the
minds of the audience by repetition, and another by
dwelling on it, how to digress from and return to his
theme, to divert the blame from himself and transfer
it to another, or to decide what points to omit and
what to ignore as negligible? It is qualities such as
these that give life and vigour to oratory; without
them it lies torpid like a body lacking the breath to
stir its limbs.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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