"Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men." - Samuel Johnson

Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.
We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.

الصمت ينشر نفسه، وكلما زادت فترة الإعراض عن الكلام، صعب على المرء أن يجد ما يقوله

Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.