"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."

"Horace ou Despréaux l’a dit avant vous.—Je le crois sur votre parole; mais je l’ai dit comme mien. Ne puis-je pas penser après eux une chose vraie, et que d’autres encore penseront après moi?"

"A great thought is a great boon, for which God is to be the first thanked, then he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the man who is the first to quote it to us."

"At all times pseudoprofound aphorisms have been more popular than rigorous arguments."

"I must stop to lament, that we cannot evince an admiring gratitude towards other excellent things by a like readiness of quotation: that we cannot, for instance, quote a star that we have been watching; or a hue of sunset; or a friend's voice, and his shake of the hand (I had almost said heart); or a beautiful picture..."

"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs by imitation."

"All which he understood by rote, And, as occasion serv'd, would quote."

"Life itself is a quotation."

"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."

"It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul."

"The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn't make any sense if quoted as it stands."

"Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated."

"There is not less wit nor invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a talent."

"The man whose book is filled with quotations, has been said to creep along the shore of authors, as if he were afraid to trust himself to the free compass of reasoning. I would rather defend such authors by a different allusion, and ask whether honey is the worse for being gathered from many flowers."

"In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments."

"Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books: else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not."

"Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author. Perhaps the next highest is, when a writer of any kind is so considerable that you go to the labor and pains of endeavoring to refute him before the public, the very doing of which is an incidental admission of his talent and power."

"One whom it is easier to hate, but still easier to quote—Alexander Pope."

"Shall we not rejoice then and revel in the glorious liberty of extract, and quote to the thousandth line? Shall we not have pages like the Pyramids?"

"Like your body, your mind also gets tired, so refresh it by wise sayings."

"At all events, the next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit."

"Its fall is entirely owing to itself, the seeds of death were in it from the commencement. The powers of satire and of derision, which it exercised with as little mercy as modesty, have proved, in the result, very humble powers; and after usurping an authority, the most dictatorial and audacious, a general doubt is now expressed as to the ability with which it was at one time supposed to have been conducted. Of this there certainly can be no dispute that it will be difficult to name as many volumes in the English language which afford so few quotable passages; and perhaps there can be no better proof of the original mediocrity of the contributors, whatever may have been the merit of a few occasional articles."

"Quotations can be valuable, like raisins in the rice pudding, for adding iron as well as eye appeal."

"Books of quotations are an elemental model of how culture is perpetuated, the wisdom of the trite passed on to posterity, to be added to, edited, and modified by subsequent generations."

"To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it."

"Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."

"Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms."

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

"Though old the thought and oft exprest, 'Tis his at last who says it best."

"Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, magazines, and folios, is the right of Quotation."

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more."

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

"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of ages may be preserved by quotation."

"The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is."

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

"The French public seem to estimate the master pieces of their favorite tragic poets chiefly by the number of fine quotable passages they supply; while their critics estimate their worth by their conformity with certain purely artificial rules."

"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."

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

"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."

"Wisdom married to immortal verse."

"One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose."

"Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good."

"Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta, Quale sopor fessis in gramine."

"A poem round and perfect as a star."

"I was promised on a time, To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason."