"Andover-Harvard Theological Library page on the notebooks of William Rounseville Alger"

“Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.”

“When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.”

“To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it.”

“The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They 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.”

“Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.”