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
Whoever reads only to transcribe or quote shining remarks without entering into the genius and spirit of the author, will be apt to be misled out of a regular way of thinking, and the product of all this will be found to be a manifest incoherent piece of patchwork. – Attributed to Swift in A Dictionary of Thoughts, Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Q

