The chief ingredients which go to make a true proverb are: sense, shortness, and salt. – James Howell, Paroimiografia, 1659

The attribution of a speaker is in fact a part of the quotation. Some statements simply are better if a certain famous person said them. – Gary Saul Morson, “Bakhtin, The Genres of Quotation, and The Aphoristic Consciou

Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors… – Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, 1716 (Part the Second, sect. ii)

Oh, to say something so fine, so memorable, that it carries across time, oceans, and languages! – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010