Those, however, who have occupied themselves with the making of collections of proverbs have sometimes failed to realize this to themselves with sufficient clearness, or at any rate have not kept it always before them; and thus it has come to pass, that many collections include whatever brief sayings their gatherers have anywhere met with, which to them have appeared keenly, or wisely, or wittily spoken;[6] while yet a multitude of these have never received their adoption into the great family of proverbs, or their rights of citizenship therein: inasmuch as they have never passed into general recognition and currency, have no claim to this title, however just a claim they may have on other grounds to our admiration and honour. For instance, this word of Goethe’s, “A man need not be an architect to live in an house,” seems to me to have every essential of a proverb, saving only that it has not passed over upon the lips of men. It is a saying of manifold application; an universal law is knit up in a particular example; I mean that gracious law in the distribution of blessing, which does not limit our use and enjoyment of things by our understanding of them, but continually makes the enjoyment much wider than the knowledge; so that it is not required that one be a botanist to have pleasure in a rose, nor a critic to delight in _Paradise Lost_, nor a theologian to taste all the blessings of Christian faith, nor, as he expresses it, an architect to live in an house. And here is an inimitable saying of Schiller’s: “Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce;” yet it is not a proverb, because his alone; although abundantly worthy to have become such;[7] moving as it does in the same line with, though far superior to, the Chinese proverb, which itself also is good: _One has never so much need of his wit, as when he has to do with a fool_.