He who trains his tongue to quote the learned sages will be known, far and wide, as a smart-ass. – Howard Kandel, The Power of Positive Pessimism: Proverbs for Our Times, 1964
Mr. [Thomas] Gray the poet has often observed to me that if a man were to form a Book of what he had seen and heard himself it must in whatever hands prove a most useful and entertaining one. – Horace Walpole, quoted in Walpoliana, 1800
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
Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green. Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen. – William Cullen Bryant
But I now entered on my fifteenth year – a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import. – Harriet Ann Jacobs
