Then your words of abuse today may turn into a universally valid principle of denigration, for words are magical formulae. They leave fingermarks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye becomes the footprints of history. One ought to watch one’s every word. – Franz Kafka, quoted by Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka

Quotation is more universal and more ancient than one would perhaps believe. – James Boswell, “The Hypochondriack,” No.XXI, The London Magazine: Or, Gentleman&

It sometimes happens at the end of a dinner, when jokes and walnuts are cracked together, that the paternity of some trite quotation is put in question, and at once the wit of the whole company is set wool-gathering. – Frederic Swartwout Cozzens, “Phrases and Filberts,” Sayings, Wise and Otherwise

You may get a large amount of truth into a brief space. – Attributed to Beecher in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1899