"Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire"
About this Quote
Desire, Quintilian suggests, is less a hunger than a loophole. The moment pleasure gets stamped “lawful,” it stops feeling like a conquest and starts feeling like a commodity. What he captures with almost clinical dryness is the erotic charge of transgression: prohibition doesn’t just block appetite, it manufactures it, giving longing a narrative (risk, secrecy, defiance) that ordinary enjoyment can’t compete with.
The intent here isn’t to romanticize vice so much as to demystify it. As an educator and rhetorician in imperial Rome, Quintilian lived in a culture obsessed with discipline, reputation, and the performance of virtue. His larger project in the Institutio Oratoria is about forming character alongside speech: training the citizen-orator to be persuasive without being morally hollow. This line reads like a warning to teachers, lawmakers, and parents who imagine that rules automatically produce restraint. Ban something and you may be drafting its marketing copy.
The subtext is psychological and political at once. “Immoderately” implies excess, the loss of proportion that threatens both personal ethics and civic order. The clever turn is that legality isn’t framed as moral correctness; it’s framed as a mood-killer. Law changes the emotional temperature. Quintilian is pointing to a paradox of governance: authority can unintentionally glamorize what it condemns. He’s also nudging the reader toward a more durable strategy than prohibition - cultivating judgment, taste, and self-command, so desire doesn’t need a forbidden sign to feel alive.
The intent here isn’t to romanticize vice so much as to demystify it. As an educator and rhetorician in imperial Rome, Quintilian lived in a culture obsessed with discipline, reputation, and the performance of virtue. His larger project in the Institutio Oratoria is about forming character alongside speech: training the citizen-orator to be persuasive without being morally hollow. This line reads like a warning to teachers, lawmakers, and parents who imagine that rules automatically produce restraint. Ban something and you may be drafting its marketing copy.
The subtext is psychological and political at once. “Immoderately” implies excess, the loss of proportion that threatens both personal ethics and civic order. The clever turn is that legality isn’t framed as moral correctness; it’s framed as a mood-killer. Law changes the emotional temperature. Quintilian is pointing to a paradox of governance: authority can unintentionally glamorize what it condemns. He’s also nudging the reader toward a more durable strategy than prohibition - cultivating judgment, taste, and self-command, so desire doesn’t need a forbidden sign to feel alive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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