But proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them. – Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, 1926

In these pages the novelist should be able to find a striking verse to head his chapter, the raconteur add to his bon mots, the man of the world enrich his stock of maxims, the divine obtain some deep thought drawn from the wells of ancient learning. – William Francis Henry King, “Introduction,” Classical and Foreign Quotations, 18

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? – Philip Gilbert Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, 1873