The present volume is the result of a taste for collecting poetical quotations, which beset me in the days of my nonage, now more than half a century ago…. I read the poets diligently, and registered, in a portable form, whatever I thought apposite and striking. – Henry G. Bohn, A Dictionary of Quotations from the English Poets, 1881

To be amused by what you read — that is the great spring of happy quotations. – C.E. Montague (1867–1928), “Quotation”

It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else. – Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923

The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer. – C.C. Colton, “Preface,” Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed To Those