The best aphorisms are…. portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs. ~William Rounseville Alger, “The Utility and the Futility of Aphorisms,” The Atlantic Monthly, February 1863TPVgb; W.R. Alger, commonly quoted as “aphorisms are portable wisdom”