[41]
Generally received sayings also become common property owing to the very fact that
they are anonymous, as, for instance, “Friends are a
treasure,” or “Conscience is as good as a thousand
witnesses,” or, to quote Cicero,1 “In the words of
the old proverb, birds of a feather flock together.”
Sayings such as these would not have acquired immortality had they not carried conviction of their
truth to all mankind.
1 Cato maj. iii 7.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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