Ancient and modern languages teem with happily expressed sentiments of more or less force and beauty, sufficiently individualized and excellent to warrant their reproduction and classification. – Maturin M. Ballou, January 1886, preface to Edge-Tools of Speech

The chief ingredients which go to make a true proverb are: sense, shortness, and salt. – James Howell, Paroimiografia, 1659

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

When two seemingly conflicting thoughts have made it to proverb or aphorism status, usually, in the ambivalence of life, both are true. – Robert Irvine Fitzhenry (1918–2008), The Harper Book of Quotations