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

Platitude. An idea (a)that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b)that is not true. – H.L. Mencken, “The Jazz Webster,” A Book of Burlesques, 1920