Short sentences drawn from long experience. – Miguel de Cervantes

Collections of gnomes, adages, sayings, and parables have been made from times immemorial in all countries and in all languages possessing some kind of literature. – E.H. Michelsen, A Manual of Quotations from the Ancient, Modern, and Oriental La

I have drag-netted the ocean, as well as the numerous narrow streams and wide rivers of literature… – Frank J. Wilstach, A Dictionary of Similes, 1916

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it… – George Santayana, “Chapter VIII: Prerational Morality,” The Life of Reason: Volu