Institutio Oratoria

For example, to restrict my remarks mainly to the study of rhetoric, what is the use of spending so many years, after the fashion now so prevalent (for I will say nothing of those who spend almost their whole lives), in declaiming in the schools and devoting so much labour to the treatment of fictitious themes, when it would be possible with but slight expenditure of time to form some idea of what the true conflicts are in which the orator must engage, and of the laws of speaking which he ought to follow?