The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

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

You may get a large amount of truth into a brief space. – Attributed to Beecher in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1899

I can tell thee where that saying was born… – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night [I, 5, Maria]

There are but few proverbial sayings that are not true, for they are all drawn from experience itself, which is the mother of all sciences. – Miguel de Cervantes