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Take my advice, dear reader, don't talk epigrams even if you have

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

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At all events, the next best thing to being witty one’s self, is to be able to quote another’s wit. – Christian Nestell Bovee, “Quoters and Quoting,” Institutions and Summaries of Th

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An inveterate quote plucker is what I have become. – Elaine Bernstein Partnow, preface to The Quotable Woman: From Eve to 1799, 1985

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To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones. – Nicolas Charles Joseph Trublet

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