But proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them. – Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, 1926

Not everything that can be extracted appears in anthologies of quotations, in commonplace books, or on the back of Celestial Seasonings boxes. Only certain sorts of extracts become quotations. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly. – Edwin P. Whipple, lecture delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Associa

Short isolated sentences were the mode in which ancient Wisdom delighted to convey its precepts, for the regulation of life and manners. – William Warburton, “Sermon IV”