Take my advice, dear reader, don’t talk epigrams even if you have the gift. I know, to those have, the temptation is almost irresistible. But resist it. Epigram and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth has to be somewhat chiselled, as it were, before it will quite fit into an epigram. – Joseph Farrell, “About Conversation,” The Lectures of a Certain Professor, 1877

[S]ources are not too reliable. The words and thoughts are the thing. “The best words in the best order” is the object of all quotations. Who made the order and when is of interest, but not vital as the many quotations by “Anon.” testify. – 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