An anthology of quotations is a museum of utterances. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

The apothegm is the most portable form of Truth…. It is thus that the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air. – William Gilmore Simms, Egeria: Or, Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods a

Nevertheless, a maxim does not necessarily become a proverb. Many grubs never grow to butterflies; and a maxim is only a proverb in its caterpillar stage—a candidate for a wider sphere and longer flight than most are destined to attain. – “Proverbs Secular and Sacred,” The North British Review, February 1858

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