In a world in which men write thousands of books and one million scientific papers a year, the mythic bricoleur is the man who plays with all that information and hears a music inside the noise. – William Irwin Thompson

The epigram is a handy weapon, having the keenness of the stiletto, and its glitter. – William Watson, “A Note on Epigram,” 1883 [a little altered —tε&#5511

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. – Samuel Johnson, quoted in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Joh

Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876