In literary composition a well-chosen quotation lights up the page like a fine engraving… – William Francis Henry King, “Introduction,” Classical and Foreign Quotations, 18

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own. – James Russell Lowell

They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge. – Edward Bulwer Lytton