We love quotations; they strengthen us in our own belief; they show that some other spirit, perhaps a master-spirit, has gone thus far with us: to such we cling as the ivy to the oak. – S.J.W., “On Female Education,” in The Christian Teacher (National Review), 1835

It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water. – Franklin P. Jones

The apothegm is the most portable form of Truth…. It is thus that the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air. – William Gilmore Simms, Egeria: Or, Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods a

The difference between my quotations and those of the next man is that I leave out the inverted commas. – George Moore, quoted in Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Times by Laurenc