"Just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations. ... The great minds of the period—Milton, Bacon, Locke—were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book. There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: in the words of one advocate, maintaining the books enabled one to “lay up a fund of knowledge, from which we may at all times select what is useful in the several pursuits of life.”"

"But quotations and aphorisms are generally just verbal Christmas presents; enticingly done up in pretty paper and ribbons, but once you get them open they generally turn out to be just socks."

"Stronger than an army is a quotation whose time has come and which is true."

":: Corollary 2A: Well-known messengers get credit for clever comments they report from less celebrated mouths."

"People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations."

"The Rules of Misquotation:"

"Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy — on experience, the mistress of their Masters. They go about puffed up and pompous, dressed and decorated with [the fruits], not of their own labours, but of those of others. And they will not allow me my own. They will scorn me as an inventor; but how much more might they — who are not inventors but vaunters and declaimers of the works of others — be blamed."

"Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs."

"Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better."

"I love them because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizedly wiser than oneself."

"Quotation brings to many one of the intensest joys of living."

"We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates."

"To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason."

"One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings."

"Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation."

"Exclusively of the abstract science, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism."

"Why are not more gems from our early prose writers scattered over the country by the periodicals?…But Great old books of the great old authors are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither time nor means to get more. Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford."

"One may quote till one compiles."

"Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants."

"The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract."

":: Corollary 2B: Particularly quotable figures receive more than their share of quotable quotes."

"When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it. Give references? Why should you? Either your readers know where you have taken the passage and the precaution is needless, or they do not know and you humiliate them."

"Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms."

"The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well."

"With just enough of learning to misquote."

"You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world."

"I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff."

"To patchwork learn'd quotations are allied, Both strive to make our poverty our pride."

"Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"A witty saying proves nothing."

"Some great writers produce a profound effect by their work as a whole, but are not readily quotable; others have the gift of condensing their meaning into a striking phrase. The conscious and deliberate literary artist will generally be found to belong to the latter class. Pope, for example, is the most quotable writer in English after Shakespeare. Stevenson stands intermediate. On the whole, he rather diffuses his meaning, and makes it an atmosphere enfolding everything; but at times his skill in words concentrates itself in a sentence or phrase, or even in a word."

"To copy beauties, forfeits all pretence To fame—to copy faults, is want of sense."

"It's better to be quotable than to be honest."

"Whoever only reads in order to transcribe wise and shining Remarks, without entering into the Genius and Spirit of the Author, as it is probable that he will make no very judicious Extract, so he will be apt to trust to that Collection in all his Compositions, and be misled out of the regular Way of thinking, in order to introduce those Materials which he has been at the Pains to gather: And the Product of all this will be found a manifest and incoherent Piece of Patchwork."

"A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation."

"Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for."

"I ask for your indulgence when I march out quotations. This is the double syndrome of men who write for a living and men who are over forty. The young smoke pot — we inhale from our Bartlett's."