Laudator Temporis Acti

Cicero, Letters to His Friends 7.19 (tr. W. Glynn Williams):

But if certain passages strike you as a little obscure, you should reflect that no art can be mastered by mere reading without someone to explain, or without a good deal of practice. You will not need to go far to find proof of that; can your own civil law be learnt from books alone? Though there is no lack of such books, they still require a teacher to elucidate them. And yet if you read this with concentration and over and over again, you will get all you want by yourself, at least so far as to grasp the meaning of it.

sin tibi quaedam videbuntur obscuriora, cogitare debebis nullam artem litteris sine interprete et sine aliqua exercitatione percipi posse. non longe abieris: num ius civile vestrum ex libris cognosci potest? qui quamquam plurimi sunt, doctorem tamen lumenque desiderant. quamquam tu si attente leges, si saepius, per te omnia consequere ut certe intelligas.

lumenque Manutius: unumque (-em G) Ω: usumque Egnatius: nonnumquam Lambinus