1809–1894 · American theologian and compiler of A Dictionary of Thoughts
Tryon Edwards was an American theologian and Congregational minister, born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1809 and died in Detroit in 1894. He served the Second Congregational Church in New London, Connecticut, but is remembered almost entirely for A Dictionary of Thoughts, the alphabetically arranged anthology of short quotations that became his best-known work. He did not write the “wise men talk” maxim and did not attribute it to anyone — his page prints it unsigned. The Plato credit belongs to the next entry down, and later readers moved it.