There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde’s plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics. – Brander Matthews, “American Aphorisms,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1915,

Dr. Richard Bentley (1662-1742)… is said one day, on finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked—’Why read a book that you cannot quote?’— a saying which affords an amusing illustration of the nature and object of his literary studies. – Cyclopædia of English Literature edited by Robert Chambers, 1844