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Words with Provenance

If we can’t verify it, we don’t print it.

Every line traced to its original source — book, edition, author. When the scholarship is divided, we say so on the listing. That’s not a marketing line. It’s the whole brand.

“…so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

William James · Principles of Psychology, 1890
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Sourced to the original

Traced to a real text, edition, and author — not a Pinterest caption.

Verified & cited

The source is on the listing. When scholarship is divided, we say so.

Substance over slogans

Lines chosen for what they say, not how they sell. No recycled motivational filler.

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The Quoteiac Journal

Concentric brass arcs expanding outward on deep charcoal — evoking the widening circles of Rilke's Book of Hours, 1905

Rainer Maria Rilke and the Life That Moves in Circles

Rilke wrote the poem before he wrote the famous letters. The Book of Hours (1905) is where "I live my life in circles that grow wide and endlessly unroll" comes from — and what it actually means.

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Epictetus portrait, from Les Morales de Plutarque, 1653, Indian ink

Epictetus: The Stoic Who Had Nothing and Knew Everything

Born a slave in ancient Rome, Epictetus built a philosophy around the one thing no one could take from him: his response to what happened. His teachings have outlasted every emperor who ignored him.

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Portrait of a young man said to be John Milton, attributed to Peter Lely, c. 1629. Christ's College, Cambridge.

Satan Said It. That’s the Point.

The most quoted line from Paradise Lost — “The mind is its own place” — is spoken by Satan. Not as a villain’s boast. As a serious philosophical argument. Here’s why that matters.

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Good to know

Questions, answered

Are the quotes actually verified?
Yes — that’s the whole point. Every line is traced to its primary source: the actual book, the edition, and for translated work, the translator and year. If we can’t verify it, we don’t print it. When scholarship is genuinely divided, we say so on the product page. We’d rather lose the sale than put the wrong name under a line.
Why is this quote credited to someone I’ve never heard of?
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” traces to Arleen Lorrance in 1974, not Gandhi. “Do not go where the path may lead” is Muriel Strode, 1903, not Emerson. When the true source turns out to be an unexpected name, that’s not a mistake on our end — it’s the whole point.
What do you do with disputed or misattributed quotes?
We sort every quote into one of three buckets. Verified: traced to a primary source, clean attribution. Commonly attributed: widely linked to a name without a solid source — we’ll only produce it if we disclose that. Disputed: real evidence of misattribution — we don’t sell it under the false name, full stop.
What does “Words with Provenance” mean?
Provenance is the documented origin of a thing — where it came from, and how you know. For us it means every line on every product can be traced back to a real source. If we can’t show you where a quote came from, we don’t sell it.
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