Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, May 1849

Nevertheless, a maxim does not necessarily become a proverb. Many grubs never grow to butterflies; and a maxim is only a proverb in its caterpillar stage—a candidate for a wider sphere and longer flight than most are destined to attain. – “Proverbs Secular and Sacred,” The North British Review, February 1858

Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. – Samuel Johnson, quoted in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Joh