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,

Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings. – William R. Alger

In such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma. – Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Liberation of Mankind, 1926

In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks, and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature. – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), “Of Reading and Writing,” Thus Spake Zara