Mr. [Thomas] Gray the poet has often observed to me that if a man were to form a Book of what he had seen and heard himself it must in whatever hands prove a most useful and entertaining one. – Horace Walpole, quoted in Walpoliana, 1800

Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer’s mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation… – Desiderius Erasmus, Adages

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced—even a Proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it. – John Keats, letter to George and Georgiana Keats, February 24, 1819