[T]here are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion. – Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift, 1963, translated from Russian by Michael Scammell

But I have long thought that if you knew a column of advertisements by heart, you could achieve unexpected felicities with them. You can get a happy quotation anywhere if you have the eye. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1923, quoted in Holmes-Laski Letters: The Correspond

The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression: the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit. – Alfred Bougeart, quoted in A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedn

He repeated to himself an old French proverb that he had made up that morning. – F. Scott Fitzgerald