“Writings such as commentaries and annotations exist to assist people in becoming sages, but in fact they close the doors to sagehood.”

Preface; Variant translations:
It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them... A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books.
The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

Homily during the Holy Mass at the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C., on 7 October 1979, during the pope's first apostolic journey to the United States
Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1979/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19791007_usa-washington_en.html

Francis Preston Venable, A Short History of Chemistry (1894) p. 6. https://books.google.com/books?id=fN9YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA6

Se me abre una puerta, entro y me hallo con cien puertas cerradas.
Voces (1943)

City Aphorisms (1984)