Attend to me, Sancho, I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and seasonably applied; but to be for ever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar. – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated from Spanish

The chief ingredients which go to make a true proverb are: sense, shortness, and salt. – James Howell, Paroimiografia, 1659

Only the use of footnotes enables historians to make their texts not monologues but conversations, in which modern scholars, their predecessors, and their subjects all take part. – Anthony Grafton (b.1950), The Footnote: A Curious History, “Epilogue: Some Concl