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

It has been said that death ends all things. This is a mistake. It does not end the volume of practical quotations, and it will not until the sequence of the alphabet is so materially changed as to place D where Z now stands. – Harper’s Bazar: Facetiæ, September 1, 1888, quoted in A Dictionary of

….whether your jewel was got from the mine or from an auctioneer. – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find. – Seneca