Always verify quotations! – Martin Joseph Routh, quoted in Catholic World: A Monthly Magazine of General Lit

Seek not to know who said this or that, but take note of what has been said. – Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated from Latin

Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings. – William R. Alger

It sometimes happens at the end of a dinner, when jokes and walnuts are cracked together, that the paternity of some trite quotation is put in question, and at once the wit of the whole company is set wool-gathering. – Frederic Swartwout Cozzens, “Phrases and Filberts,” Sayings, Wise and Otherwise