A vast meaning is unfolded in each line, with such power that a sentence only a line long would suffice for a whole life’s training. – Rufinus (translated from Latin), about The Sentences of Sextus

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it. – Anatole France, “The Creed”

[A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp… that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages! – William Mathews, “Self-Reliance,” Getting on in the World; Or, Hints on Success

There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde’s plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics. – Brander Matthews, “American Aphorisms,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1915,