To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it. – William Rounseville Alger, “The Utility and the Futility of Aphorisms,” The Atla

No other quotes found from this author.
Other Quotes from
Quotations
category

As proverbs are meant to be portable, it is essential that they should be packed up in few words… – “Proverbs Secular and Sacred,” The North British Review, February 1858

Category:
Quotations

The divine gift is ever the instant life, which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

Category:
Quotations

Many moons ago dictionaries of quotations may have been less needed than they are today. In those good/bad old days, people walked around with entire poems and all the Shakespearean soliloquies in their heads…. – Joseph Epstein, Foreword to Fred R. Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations, 200

Category:
Quotations

People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy. – Gary Saul Morson, The Long and Short of It: From Aphorism to Novel, 2012

Category:
Quotations

Random Quotes

O fret not after knowledge — I have none, and yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge — I have none, and yet the Evening listens. – John Keats

Category:
Birds

I got into this little habit of architecture and building. I designed a house in Colorado and one in Hawaii. The idea is supposed to be build and sell – but then I can never bring myself to sell them. – Trey Parker

Category:
architecture

Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a mans lifetime income – which he then spends sending his son to college. – Bill Vaughan

Category:
Education

I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion, but it is a civilization bent on destroying ours. – Tom Tancredo

Category:
Religion