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Collect as pearls the words of the wise and virtuous.—ABD-EL-KADER
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Aphorisms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling.—W. R. ALGER
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Proverbs are potted wisdom.—CHARLES BUXTON
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A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that eye placed in the back of his head.—COLERIDGE
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Books are the beehives of thought; laconics the honey taken from them.—JAMES ELLIS
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Apothegms are, in history, the same as the pearls of the sand, or the gold in the mine.—ERASMUS
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What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of Nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and thinking.—O. W. HOLMES
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Apothegms form a short cut to much knowledge.—THOMAS HOOD
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The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in few words.—SAMUEL JOHNSON
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I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narration; grow weary of preparation and connection and illustrations, and all those arts by which a big book is made.—SAMUEL JOHNSON
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Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.—MACAULAY, On Niccolo Machiavelli
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Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered, from the time of the seven sages of Greece to that of poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action.—MACAULAY, On Niccolo Machiavelli
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Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning glasses,—to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's imagination.—SWIFT
