Quotations

Dr. [Richard] Bentley’s son reading a novel, the Doctor said, “Why read a book which you cannot quote?” – Walpoliana (Horace Walpole, John Pinkerton), “Useless Reading,” January 1800

Dr. Richard Bentley (1662-1742)… is said one day, on finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked—’Why read a book that you cannot quote?’— a saying which affords an amusing illustration of the nature and object of his literary studies. – Cyclopædia of English Literature edited by Robert Chambers, 1844

Mr. [Thomas] Gray the poet has often observed to me that if a man were to form a Book of what he had seen and heard himself it must in whatever hands prove a most useful and entertaining one. – Horace Walpole, quoted in Walpoliana, 1800

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

Then your words of abuse today may turn into a universally valid principle of denigration, for words are magical formulae. They leave fingermarks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye becomes the footprints of history. One ought to watch one’s every word. – Franz Kafka, quoted by Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka

Apothegms to thinking minds are the seeds from which spring vast fields of new thought, that may be further cultivated, beautified, and enlarged. – Ramsay, as quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: A Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotation

A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of his head. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as quoted in Leigh Hunt’s London Journal and The

Sensible men show their sense by saying much in few words. Noble actions are the substance of life; good sayings its ornament and guide. – Charles Simmons, “Aphorisms Introductory,” Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker, 18

…I didn’t do anything that can properly be called research; rather, I proceeded by the methodless method of “determined browsing”— – Rudolf Flesch, on collecting excerpts for The Book of Unusual Quotations, 1957

It’s amazing how much funny stuff there is…. [A] river of rich comedic milk is flowing across the land, and as fast as I skim off the cream more cream appears…. I may be doomed to wade around forever in other people’s pith. Not that it’s such a bad life. – Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said,

I had continued jotting down good lines—once the eyes and ears are awakened to the possibilities they can’t be put back to sleep… – Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said,

We’re a compulsive but amiable crew, those of us who feel, or have felt, the compulsion to re-record the bright thoughts of other men and women. – Joseph Epstein, “Quotatious,” A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991

In quoting others we cite ourselves. – Julio Cortázar (1914–1984), Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Oh, to say something so fine, so memorable, that it carries across time, oceans, and languages! – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

So our student will flit like a busy bee through the entire garden of literature, light on every blossom, collect a little nectar from each, and carry it to his hive… – Desiderius Erasmus, De Copia, 1512, translated

Children seldom misquote. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldnt have said. – Anon.

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well. – Amos Bronson Alcott

Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings. – William R. Alger