The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind. – Francis H. Bradley, Aphorisms, 1930

Take my advice, dear reader, don’t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram. – Joseph Farrell, “About Conversation,” The Lectures of a Certain Professor, 1877

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

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, May 1849