Excerpt from Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Relgion Proverbs are the wheat which remains after a whole world of talk and writing has sifted through innumerable minds. They are the fine essence of literature, true embodiments of the experience of life, and they most abound in the most vital books. They are the form of speech all the great teachers have loved; the mould in which the people have most gladly received and most abidingly held the great moral truths. Mothers tell them to their children, poets put them in the mouths of their heroes; and the devil may quote them for his purpose. The test of a thought is that it contain its worth and meaning apart from the context. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.