B. H. Roberts
"I remember having a very rich bit of experience with that passage in the younger days of my ministry when I was on my first mission. It fell to my lot to engage in a three-day debate with a seasoned man in that line of work. I was but twenty-three and had had no experience. He was fifty-four and had the reputation of having driven all his opponents from the platform. He mocked considerably at the Book of Mormon, and brought up this very question of its lack of incisiveness and clear-cut aphorisms, and challenged me to produce anything that could be comparable with the sharp, clear-cut aphorisms of the Bible scriptures.
"I told him I could think just at the moment of but one, and that was, ’Fools mock, but they shall mourn.’
"I am not very much acquainted with his history after that debate, but after three days’ discussion he utterly refused to go on with the debate, when it was really but half through, and notwithstanding he had previously driven every opponent from the platform…immediately following the discussion, we began baptizing, and within two months had raised up a branch in the neighborhood of more than sixty members. The Lord so blessed us on that occasion.
“After calling this gentleman’s attention to that passage, ’Fools mock, but they shall mourn,’ he did not ask for any more aphorisms.” (Conference Report, Apr. 1928, p. 108-9)