Whoever reads only to transcribe or quote shining remarks without entering into the genius and spirit of the author, will be apt to be misled out of a regular way of thinking, and the product of all this will be found to be a manifest incoherent piece of patchwork. – Attributed to Swift in A Dictionary of Thoughts, Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Q

One man’s wit, and all men’s wisdom. – John Russell, definition of a proverb

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as quoted in Leigh Hunt’s London Journal and The