There are plenty of good maxims in the world; we fail only in applying them. – Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), translated from the French by an unnamed transl

The man whose book is filled with quotations, may be said to creep along the shore of authors, as if he were afraid to trust himself to the free compass of reasoning. – Quoted unattributed in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, April 1

The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind. – Francis H. Bradley, Aphorisms, 1930