The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often those which contain
the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.--_Mazzini._
To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new
ones.--_Trublet._
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._
A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as
a shell that survives a deluge.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their
expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar, or salt, that must be
melted in a drop of water.--_J. Petit Senn._
As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours
old, I am daily admonished that allusions, the most obvious, to anything
in the rear of our own times need explanation.--_De Quincey._