And in spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Daniel Deronda (Book II, Meeting Streams), 1876

As by some might be saide of me: that here I have but gathered a nosegay of strange floures, and have put nothing of mine unto it, but the thred to binde them. Certes, I have given unto publike opinion, that these borrowed ornaments accompany me; but I meane not they should cover or hide me… – Michel de Montaigne, “Of Phisiognomy,” translated by John Florio; commonly moder

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as quoted in Leigh Hunt’s London Journal and The

Many of the historical proverbs have a doubtful paternity. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876