Ancient and modern languages teem with happily expressed sentiments of more or less force and beauty, sufficiently individualized and excellent to warrant their reproduction and classification. – Maturin M. Ballou, January 1886, preface to Edge-Tools of Speech

There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde’s plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics. – Brander Matthews, “American Aphorisms,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1915,

Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. – Abdelkader

[W]hen I hear or read a good line I can hardly wait to tell it to somebody else… – Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said,