A writer can get into a vast deal of trouble through misquotation. If you ever want to receive lots of mail, I recommend you get a Shakespeare quote wrong in a magazine or newspaper.” – Joseph Epstein, Foreward to Fred Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations, 2006

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

But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words. – Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, November 19, 1751

The short sayings of the wise and good men are of great value, like the dust of gold, or the sparks of diamonds. – Attributed to Tillotson in A Dictionary of Thoughts: A Cyclopedia of Laconic Quo