A quotation from Horace

Whene’er you lecture, be concise: the soul
Takes in short maxims, and retains them whole:
But pour in water when the vessel’s filled,
It simply dribbles over and is spilled.
 
[Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis, ut cito dicta
percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles:
omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat.]

Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 2, ep. 3 “Art of Poetry [Ars Poetica; To the Pisos],” l. 335ff (2.3.335-337) (19 BC) [tr. Conington (1874)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/horace/33634/

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A quotation from La Rochefoucauld

There are people who resemble popular songs: they are sung for a time and then forgotten.
 
[Il y a des gens qui ressemblent aux vaudevilles, qu’on ne chante qu’un certain temps.]

François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶211 (1665-1678) [tr. FitzGibbon (1957)]

More info about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/la-rochefoucauld-fra…

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A quotation from Lincoln

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! — how consoling in the depth of affliction!

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1859-09-30), Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee

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A quotation from Shakespeare

JULIET:          Although I joy in thee,
   I have no joy of this contract tonight.
   It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
   Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
   Ere one can say “It lightens.”

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, sc. 2, l. 123ff (2.2.123-127) (1595)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/shakespeare-william/…

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