The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words.

South is pointing to the classical tradition that the “Seven Sages” were remembered less for lengthy treatises than for compact maxims (e.g., “Know thyself,” “Nothing in excess”). His remark underscores a rhetorical and moral lesson congenial to a sermonizing divine: enduring reputation can rest on a few well-chosen words, and wisdom often appears most forcefully in brevity. Implicitly, he contrasts concise, memorable moral sentences with verbose discourse, suggesting that clarity and moral weight—not quantity—make speech influential. The line also gestures to how cultures canonize wisdom through quotable aphorisms that can be easily transmitted and remembered.