Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings.
Alger, William Rounseville

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius; a vital appropriating exercise of mind closely allied to that which first created it.
Alger, William Rounseville

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
Allen, Fred

I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.
Bartlett, John

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
Benchley, Robert Charles

Quoting: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett

For every proverb that confidently asserts its little bit of wisdom, there is usually an equal and opposite proverb that contradicts it.
Boston, Richard

To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgement, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.
Bovee, Christian Nestell

An aphorism is true where it has fixed the impression of a genuine experience.
Bradley, Francis Herbert

A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Robert

I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.
Burns, Robert

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces,
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Byron, Lord George Gordon Noel

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity
Carlyle, Thomas

A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
Cervantes, Miguel de

[Proverbs are] short sentences drawn from long experiences.
Cervantes, Miguel de

Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fuelled by a quotation.
Cioran, Emile M

A man of maxims only, is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
Diderot, Denis

I love them because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizably wiser than oneself.
Dietrich, Marlene

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.
Disraeli, Benjamin

When we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.
Disraeli, Benjamin

Never be so brief as to become obscure.
Edwards, Tyron

Sense, brevity, and point are the elements of a good proverb.
Edwards, Tyron