The best lines are those that bears repeating. Some might elicit a chuckle, others coerce one to pause and meditate on what they just read. Here are some recent quotations I have come upon. Do read these slowly. All lines were spoken by 19th century contemporaries. Which statement shall you be repeating?
Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux
“Advice. To. Persons. About. To. Write. History.-Don’t.” ~John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton
“To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.”~[Amos] Bronson Alcott
“Resolved to take Fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.”~Louisa May Alcott
“And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pygmies, came into the world.”~Horone Balzac
“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore!”~Henry Ward Beecher
“If there is anybody here I have not offended, I apologize.”~Johannes Brahms
“What is valuable is not new and what is new is not vaulable.”~Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux
“A minute success pays the failure of years.”~Robert Browning
“Some part of me, I don’t know which, contradicts the rest.”~George Buchner
“The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke til you have made it into the fire.”~Thomas Carlyle
“No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.”~Carrie Chapman Catt
“The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitiate.”~Francois Rene de Chateaubraind
“I would rather be right than be President.”~Henry Clay
“Thou shalt not covet, but tradition approves all forms of competition.”~Arthur Hugh Clough
“There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may,-light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”~John Constable
“Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”~Emile Coue