There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it. – Richard Chenevix Trench, Proverbs and Their Lessons, 1905

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers… – Isaac D’Israeli, “The Philosophy of Proverbs,” Curiosities of Literature,

[Q]uotations, like the words of our language itself, change in relevance and currency. – Robert Irvine Fitzhenry (1918–2008), The Harper Book of Quotations

The apothegm is the most portable form of Truth…. It is thus that the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air. – William Gilmore Simms, Egeria: Or, Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods a