Perhaps believing in good design is like believing in God, it makes you an optimist.

Terence apparently died young probably in Greece or on his way back to Rome. Terence wrote in a simple conversational Latin and most students who persevere long enough to be able to read him in the vernacular find his style particularly pleasant and direct. But the gossip not discouraged by Terence lived and throve; it crops up in Cicero and Quintilian and the ascription of the plays to Scipio had the honour to be accepted by Montaigne and rejected by Diderot.

One famous quotation by Terence reads: "Homo sum humani nihil a me alienum puto" or "I am a human being I consider nothing that is human alien to me. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. All of the six plays Terence wrote have survived.