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

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words. – E.M. Cioran, “Atrophy of Utterance,” All Gall Is Divided: Gnomes and Apothegms,

It has been said that death ends all things. This is a mistake. It does not end the volume of practical quotations, and it will not until the sequence of the alphabet is so materially changed as to place D where Z now stands. – Harper’s Bazar: Facetiæ, September 1, 1888, quoted in A Dictionary of

One would think that a scissors and pastepot collection like this would require little help. Not true. A tribe of hunters and gatherers is required: there is so much to be seen for so little selected. – Robert Irvine Fitzhenry (1918–2008), The Harper Book of Quotations