Introduction

When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple.  Take it and copy it.[i] 

All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who can condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character, or illustrates an existence.[ii] I have laboriously collected this cento out of diverse writers.  I have wronged no authors but given every man his own.... Bees do little harm and damage no one in extracting honey; I can say of myself, whom have I injured?  The matter is theirs most part, and yet mine.... it becomes something different in its new setting.[iii]  Someone might say of me that I have only made a bouquet of other people's flowers here, having supplied nothing of my own but the thread to bind them.[iv] 

It's such a pleasure to write down splendid words - almost as though one were inventing them. [v] 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.[vi]  

__________________________________________________

[i] Anatole France 

[ii] Benjamin Disraeli 

[iii] Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy 

[iv] Michel de Montaigne 

[v] Rupert Hart-Davis 

[vi] Samuel Johnson