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

Don’t you love quotations? I am immensely fond of them; a certain proof of erudition…. [I]f you should happen to write an insipid poem… send it to me, and my fiat shall crown you with immortality. – Frances Brooke, Lady Julia Mandeville , 1763

A good conversationalist is not one who remembers what was said, but says what someone wants to remember. – John Mason Brown