The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than in the poem. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art”

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find. – Seneca

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

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