A knowledge of general literature is one of the evidences of an enlightened mind; and to give an apt quotation at a fitting time, proves that the mind is stored with sentential lore that can always be used to great advantage by its possessor. – James Ellis, quoted in Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopædia of Prose Quota

Take my advice, dear reader, don’t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram. – Joseph Farrell, “About Conversation,” The Lectures of a Certain Professor, 1877

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876