Like your body your mind also gets tired so refresh it by wise sayings. ~Hazrat Ali
The only way to read a book of aphorisms without being bored is to open
it at random and, having found something that interests you, close the
book and meditate. ~Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne, 1796
I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have,
beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser
than oneself. ~Marlene Dietrich
In places this book is a little over-written, because Mr Blunden is no
more able to resist a quotation than some people are to refuse a
drink.~George Orwell, review of Cricket Country by Edmund Blunden, April 20, 1944, in Manchester Evening News
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage
when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? ~Philip
Gilbert Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, 1873
Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries,
unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance,
and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning. ~Samuel Johnson, 1760
It sometimes happens at the end of a dinner, when jokes and walnuts are
cracked together, that the paternity of some trite quotation is put in
question, and at once the wit of the whole company is set
wool-gathering. ~Frederic Swartwout Cozzens, "Phrases and Filberts," Sayings, Wise and Otherwise
Quotations will tell the full measure of meaning, if you have enough of them. ~James Murray
The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell
of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is
about to happen. ~Lemony Snicket, The Vile Village, 2001
Life itself is a quotation. ~Jorge Luis Borges
While reading writers of great formulatory power - Henry James,
Santayana, Proust - I find I can scarcely get through a page without
having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James,
for example, I have muttered to myself, "C'mon, Henry, turn down the
brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a
very small number of people who have developed writer's cramp while
reading. ~Joseph Epstein, "Quotatious," A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991
It is a pleasure to be able to quote lines to fit any occasion... ~Abraham Lincoln
A quote is just a tattoo on the tongue. ~Attributed to William F. DeVault
For I often please myself with the fancy, now that I may have saved from
oblivion the only striking passage in a whole volume, and now that I
may have attracted notice to a writer undeservedly forgotten. ~Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
Ralph Keyes calls quotation collectors "quotographers," the men and
women who gather catchwords, watchwords, war words, winged words,
maxims, mottos, sayings, and quips into books of a thousand pages.
Through the centuries quotation collectors have saved quotations that
would otherwise be lost. ~Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010
Quotology disdains no quotations whatsoever, a duty it bears stoutly, with bloodshot eyes and sagging shelves. ~Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010
I've compiled a book from the Internet. It's a book of quotations attributed to the wrong people. ~Jerry Seinfeld
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to
quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.
~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923
To engage in the agreeable task of culling the beauties of English
literature, is like entering into a garden richly stocked with fruits
and flowers. There is such an endless variety of blossoms on every
side—so much to charm the eye, and woo the touch, that he who merely
aims at arranging a suitable wreath, is apt to fail, from the very
profusion of materials that are scattered around him. ~Classic Cullings and Fugitive Gatherings by An Experienced Editor, 1831
I have heard that nothing gives an Author so great Pleasure, as to find
his Works respectfully quoted by other learned Authors. ~Benjamin
Franklin, "Preface," Poor Richard Improved, wording verified by Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except
in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and
illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. ~Samuel
Johnson, quoted in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by James Boswell, 1785
My readers, who may at first be apt to consider Quotation as downright
pedantry, will be surprised when I assure them, that next to the simple
imitation of sounds and gestures, Quotation is the most natural and most
frequent habitude of human nature. For, Quotation must not be confined
to passages adduced out of authors. He who cites the opinion, or remark,
or saying of another, whether it has been written or spoken, is
certainly one who quotes; and this we shall find to be universally
practiced. ~James Boswell, "The Hypochondriack," No.XXI, The London Magazine: Or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, June 1779
There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation. ~James Boswell, "The Hypochondriack," No. XXII, 1779
Quotation is more universal and more ancient than one would perhaps believe. ~James Boswell, "The Hypochondriack," No.XXI, The London Magazine: Or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, June 1779
He wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors. ~Rudyard Kipling
I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may
as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape
machine, except that you can't unplug me. ~Joseph Epstein, "Quotatious," A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991
For, what though his Head be empty, provided his Common place-Book be full... ~Jonathan Swift, "A Digression in Praise of Digressions," A
Tale of a Tub: Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To
Which is Added, An Account of a Battel Between the Antient and Modern
Books in St. James's Library, 1704
I'm discovering that everybody is a closet quotesmith. Just give them a chance. ~Robert Brault,
I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or
Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with
in any quotation. ~Joseph Addison, Spectator, No.464
Quotologists encounter happy surprises, bright books by faded authors, treasures hidden under dust. ~Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010
A book of quotations... can never be complete. ~Robert M. Hamilton
What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our
current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can
hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the
concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life
according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems!
Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained to inner
harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world
began! He must pass through the fire. ~Norman Douglas, South Wind, 1921
Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like
ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people's laundry. I got
into it originally while trying to break an addiction to candy. I kicked
candy and now seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my
brain instead of my teeth. ~Robert Byrne, "Sources, References, and
Notes," The Other 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, 1984
Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other
harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only
fame I care for. ~Alexander Smith
Shake was a dramatist of note;
He lived by writing things to quote...
~V. Hugo Dusenbury, "The Private Pantheon of Puck's Private Poet," Puck, January 28, 1880, Vol. VI, No. 151
Learning is often spoken of as if we are watching the open pages of all
the books which we have ever read, and then, when occasion arises, we
select the right page to read aloud to the universe. ~Alfred North
Whitehead, address delivered to the Training College Association of
England, quoted in Bulletin of The American Association of University Professors, November 1923, Volume IX, Number 7
Always verify quotations! ~Martin Joseph Routh, quoted in Catholic World: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science, March 1882; in other sources sometimes quoted as "your references"
Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. ~El Amir Abdelkader
Proverbs are potted wisdom. ~Charles Buxton
In such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere
in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma. ~Hendrik Willem
van Loon, The Liberation of Mankind, 1926
Most collectors collect tangibles. As a quotation collector, I collect
wisdom, life, invisible beauty, souls alive in ink. ~Terri Guillemets
I here present thee with a hive of bees, laden some with wax, and some
with honey. Fear not to approach! there are no wasps, there are no
hornets here. If some wanton bee chance to buzz about thine ears, stand
thy ground and hold thy hands—there's none will sting thee, if thou
strike not first. If any do, she hath honey in her bag will cure thee
too. ~Francis Quarles
We love quotations; they strengthen us in our own belief; they show that
some other spirit, perhaps a master-spirit, has gone thus far with us:
to such we cling as the ivy to the oak. ~S.J.W., "On Female Education,"
in The Christian Teacher (National Review), 1835
It is a rich storehouse for those who love quotations. It is as full of fine bon mots as a Christmas pudding is full of plums. ~"Fitz-Greene Halleck as a Poet," Hours at Home: A Popular Monthly of Instruction and Recreation, February 1868, about Halleck's poem "Fanny"
Don't you love quotations? I am immensely fond of them; a certain proof
of erudition.... [I]f you should happen to write an insipid poem... send
it to me, and my fiat shall crown you with immortality. ~Frances Brooke, Lady Julia Mandeville , 1763
...the curious hunter-up of rare quotations... the young and struggling
scribbler... ~William Francis Henry King, "Introduction," Classical and Foreign Quotations, 1889
...the taste of the finely-worded truth rolled upon the tongue as its
thought is revolved in the mind. ~William Francis Henry King,
"Introduction," Classical and Foreign Quotations, 1889
It has been said that death ends all things. This is a mistake. It does
not end the volume of practical quotations, and it will not until the
sequence of the alphabet is so materially changed as to place D where Z
now stands. ~Harper's Bazar: Facetiæ, September 1, 1888, quoted in A Dictionary of Quotations in Prose by Anna L. Ward, 1889
Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author. ~André-Marie Ampère
They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in
prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge.
~Edward Bulwer Lytton
Not everything that can be extracted appears in anthologies of
quotations, in commonplace books, or on the back of Celestial Seasonings
boxes. Only certain sorts of extracts become quotations. ~Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011
The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every
thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries. ~Voltaire
He picked something out of everything he read. ~Pliny
Books are the beehives of thought; laconics, the honey taken from them. ~James Ellis, quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1899
Life is like quotations. Sometimes it makes you laugh. Sometimes it
makes you cry. Most of the time, you just don't get it. ~Author Unknown
A case which commonly happens with us in London, as well as our Neighbours in Paris, where if a Witty Man starts a happy thought, a Million of sordid Imitators ride it to death. ~Thomas Brown, Laconics: Or, New Maxims of State and Conversation
A well arranged scrapbook, filled with choice selections, is a most
excellent companion for anyone who has the least literary taste.
~Chaning, quoted in Sayings: Proverbs, Maxims, Mottoes by Charles F. Schutz, 1915
Most of the noted literary men have indulged in the prudent habit of
selecting favorite passages for future reference. ~Charles F. Schutz, Sayings: Proverbs, Maxims, Mottoes, 1915
It is bad enough to see one's own good things fathered on other people,
but it is worse to have other people's rubbish fathered upon oneself.
~Samuel Butler
[W]hen I hear or read a good line I can hardly wait to tell it to somebody else... ~Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, 1986
Particles of science are often very widely scattered. Writers of
extensive comprehension have incidental remarks upon topicks very remote
from the principal subject, which are often more valuable than formal
treatises, and which yet are not known because they are not promised in
the title. He that collects those under proper heads is very laudably
employed, for though he exerts no great abilities in the work, he
facilitates the progress of others, and by making that easy of
attainment which is already written, may give some mind, more vigorous
or more adventurous than his own, leisure for new thoughts and original
designs. ~Samuel Johnson, The Idler, December 1, 1759
Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all
forests and mines and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from
all his ancestors. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Plato; Or, The Philosopher"
The mind will quote whether the tongue does or not. ~Attributed to Emerson in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1886
I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something
in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find
again. Sure he is that he read it there; but no one else ever read it,
nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many moons ago dictionaries of quotations may have been less needed than
they are today. In those good/bad old days, people walked around with
entire poems and all the Shakespearean soliloquies in their heads....
~Joseph Epstein, Foreword to Fred R. Shapiro's Yale Book of Quotations, 2006
Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life
a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar's dinner, from a hundred
charities? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Quotation and Originality," Letters and Social Aims, 1876
Short sentences drawn from long experience. ~Miguel de Cervantes
In phrases as brief as a breath worldly wisdom concentrates. ~Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010
It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with
confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. ~Mark Twain (Samuel L.
Clemens), Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, 1897
As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay
of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred
to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these
borrowed ornaments accompany me; but I meane not they should cover or
hide me... ~Michel de Montaigne, "Of Phisiognomy," translated by John
Florio; commonly modernized to "I have gathered a posy of other men's
flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own."
A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter.
True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull
flowers of rhetoric. ~Christian Nestell Bovee, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought: Vol. II, 1862
I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said that "you
are what you eat," but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what
you quote. ~Joseph Epstein, "Quotatious," A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991
Some lines are born quotations, some are made quotations, and some have "quotation" thrust upon them. ~Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011
Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of
an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety
which they lend to its style and treatment. ~Christian Nestell Bovee,
"Quoters and Quoting," Institutions and Summaries of Thought, 1862
Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk... ~William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, c.1598
For I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase... ~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The devil can cite scripture for his purpose. ~William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peas;
And utters it again when God doth please:
He is wit's pedler; and retails his wares...
~William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (Boyet)
Our "experienced Editor" has learnt the advantages of variety in his
experience. The volume before us contains a little of every thing. Sense
and nonsense, sentiment and wit, pathos and merriment, short passages
from different authors, a stock of anecdote, and a number of bon-mots.
It is an agreeable miscellany, best characterised in the words of
Shakespeare: "He has been at a great feast of languages, and stolen all
the scraps." ~The London Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c., December 4, 1830, No.724, "Review of New Books," about Classic Cullings and Fugitive Gatherings by An Experienced Editor
Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations. ~Orson Welles, attributed
Anatole France frankly advised, "When a thing has been said and said
well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Yes, indeed, but do more.
Copy many well-said things. Pierce them together. Assimilate them. Make
the process of reading them a way to form the mind and shape the soul.
As anthologies can never be complete, we will never exhaust the ways
quotations can enrich our lives. ~Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011
A good maxim is never out of season. ~English Proverb
A proverb is to speech what salt is to food. ~Arabic Proverb
Don't quote your proverb till you bring your ship into port. ~Gaelic Proverb
Good sayings are like pearls strung together. ~Chinese Proverb
Proverbs are the daughters of daily experience. ~Dutch Proverb
Proverbs are the lamps to words. ~Arabian Proverb
Proverbs are the literature of reason. ~French Proverb
We who are quotatious are never truly alone, but always hear the
cheerful flow of remarks made by dead writers so much more intelligent
than we. ~Joseph Epstein, "Quotatious," A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991
The best aphorisms are.... portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts
of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual
stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point
in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a
crystallization of warning and protective proverbs. ~William Rounseville
Alger, "The Utility and the Futility of Aphorisms," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1863
It is the habit of the mind to condense into diminutive, agreeable and
striking forms the results of experience and observation in all the
departments of life. As the carbon, disengaged by fire in its
multitudinous offices, crystallizes into a diamond that flashes fire
from every facet, and bears at every angle the solvent power of the
mother flame; so great clouds of truth are evolved by human experience,
which are crystallized at last into proverbs, that flash with the lights
of history and illuminate the darkness which rests upon the track of
the future. ~Timothy Titcomb (J.G. Holland), "An Exordial Essay," Gold-foil: Hammered from Popular Proverbs, 1859
The proverbs of a nation furnish the index to its spirit and the results
of its civilization. ~Timothy Titcomb (J.G. Holland), "An Exordial
Essay," Gold-foil: Hammered from Popular Proverbs, 1859
[T]hey are the offspring of experience... instinct with blood and breath
and vitality.... They are not propositions, conceived in the
understanding and addressed to life, but propositions born of life
itself, and addressed to the heart. They were not conceived in the minds
of the great few, but they sprang from the life of the people. ~Timothy
Titcomb (J.G. Holland), "An Exordial Essay," Gold-foil: Hammered from Popular Proverbs, 1859
A single gnomic line can come to resonate with centuries of subsequent wisdom. ~Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011
Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers... ~Isaac D'Israeli, "The Philosophy of Proverbs," Curiosities of Literature, 1893
The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as
some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite
ornaments of oratory. ~Isaac D'Israeli, "Quotation," A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature, Volume I, second edition, 1824
All this is labour which never meets the eye.... But too open and
generous a revelation of the chapter and the page of the original
quoted, has often proved detrimental to the legitimate honours of the
quoter. They are unfairly appropriated by the next comer; the quoter is
never quoted, but the authority he has afforded is produced by his
successor with the air of an original research. ~Isaac D'Israeli,
"Quotation," A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature, Volume I, second edition, 1824
Whatever is felicitously expressed risks being worse expressed: it is a
wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies
before us. We quote, to save proving what has been demonstrated,
referring to where the proofs may be found. We quote, to screen
ourselves from the odium of doubtful opinions, which the world would not
willingly accept from ourselves; and we may quote from the curiosity
which only a quotation itself can give, when in our own words it would
be divested of that tint of ancient phrase, that detail of narrative,
and that naïveté, which we have for ever lost, and which we like to recollect once had an existence. ~Isaac D'Israeli, "Quotation," A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature, Volume I, second edition, 1824
A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the
wit of other men; he searches where knowledge is to be found; and though
he may not himself excel in invention, his ingenuity may compose one of
those agreeable books, the deliciæ of literature, that will out-last the fading meteors of his day. ~Isaac D'Israeli, "Quotation," A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature, Volume I, second edition, 1824
The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those
conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract.
Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a
great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his
feelings with undisputed authority. ~Isaac D'Israeli, "Quotation," A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature, Volume I, second edition, 1824
Centuries have not worm-eaten the solidity of this ancient furniture of the mind. ~Isaac D'Israeli
Nor must you find fault with me if I often give you what I have borrowed
from my various reading, in the very words of the authors themselves.
~Macrobius, translated from Latin
If you would the truth oppose
By quotations, you will find
Plenty; but, when all is done,
Though they're many, truth is one.
~Tomas de Iriarte, Fabulas Literarias, translated from Spanish
Unless created as freestanding works, quotations resemble "found" art.
They are analogous, say, to a piece of driftwood identified as formally
interesting enough to be displayed in an art museum or to a weapon moved
from an anthropological to an artistic display.... The presenter of
found art, whether material or verbal, has become a sort of artist. He
has not made the object, but he has made it as art. ~Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011
You complain, Velox, that the epigrams which I write are long. You
yourself write nothing; your attempts are shorter. ~Marcus Valerius
Martialis, translated from Latin
Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men
eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end
by eating all. ~Sébastien-Roch Nicolas
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment,
With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out
By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long
That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time
Sparkle for ever...
~Alfred Tennyson, The Princess: A Medley, 1847
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool. ~Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest, 1886, translated from French by Isabel F. Hapgood
A wise word is not a substitute for a piece of herring. ~Sholom Aleichem
I wonder if "an" ever occurs before "haughty" except in a quotation, or
whether you can make anything sound like a quotation by adding a word
like "goeth"? ~Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011
There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have
committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson,
might have saved us from it. ~Richard Chenevix Trench, Proverbs and Their Lessons, 1905
Language would be tolerable without spicy, epigrammatic sayings, and
life could no doubt be carried on by means of plain language wholly
bereft of ornament. But if we wish to relish language, if we wish to
give it point and piquancy, and if we want to drive home a truth, to
whip up the flagging attention of our listener, to point a moral or
adorn a tale, we must flavour our speech with proverbs. ~John Christian,
"Introduction," Behar Proverbs, 1891
Aphorism or maxim, let us remember that this wisdom of life is the true
salt of literature; that those books, at least in prose, are most
nourishing which are most richly stored with it; and that it is one of
the great objects, apart from the mere acquisition of knowledge, which
men ought to seek in the reading of books. ~John Morley, Aphorisms: An Address Delivered Before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, November 11, 1887
Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas
which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’
shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.
~Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric
The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels. ~Hazrat Inayat Khan
You may get a large amount of truth into a brief space. ~Attributed to Beecher in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1899
I said that I loved the wise proverb,
Brief, simple and deep;
For it I'd exchange the great poem
That sends us to sleep.
~Bryan Waller Procter
Who knows but that all the men to whom reference has been made, and a
multitude of others who lived in by-gone ages borrowed their wise
sayings from the talk of the firesides and the conversations of the
market places; so that the origin of many proverbs now flippantly quoted
in the converse of men is lost in the mists of forgotten centuries.
~Dwight Edwards Marvin, The Antiquity of Proverbs, 1922
The teachings of elegant sayings
Should be collected when one can.
For the supreme gift of words of wisdom,
Any price will be paid.
~Nāgārjuna
The lips of the wise are as the doors of a cabinet; no sooner are they
opened, but treasures are poured out before thee. Like unto trees of
gold arranged in beds of silver, are wise sentences uttered in due
season. ~The Economy of Human Life, Translated from an Indian Manuscript, Written by an Ancient Bramin
The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of
time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of
nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk
concussion of the most sparkling wit. ~Edwin P. Whipple, lecture
delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, December
1845
In the Bodleian Library at Oxford, there is an English Translation of
Saint Paul's Epistles, printed in the black letter, which the Princess
used while she was here imprisoned; in a blank leaf of which, the
following paragraph, written with her own hand, and in the pedantry of
the times, yet remains: "I walke many tim