Quotations

I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape machine, except that you can’t unplug me. – Joseph Epstein, “Quotatious,” A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991

I am wonderfully pleased when I meet with any passage in an old Greek or Latin author, that is not blown upon, and which I have never met with in any quotation. – Joseph Addison, Spectator, No.464

Quotologists encounter happy surprises, bright books by faded authors, treasures hidden under dust. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

A book of quotations… can never be complete. – Robert M. Hamilton

I enjoy collecting quotations. When I find a choice one I pounce on it like a lepidopterist. My day is made. When I lose one because I did not copy it out at once I feel bereft. – R.I. Fitzhenry, preface to The David & Charles Book of Quotations, September 198

No claim is made here for scholarship, or for the earliest use of a quote or even, in some cases, the precise wording…. No matter: in my opinion, they are in this form graceful, compact and cogent. – R.I. Fitzhenry, preface to The David & Charles Book of Quotations, September 198

Always verify quotations! – Martin Joseph Routh, quoted in Catholic World: A Monthly Magazine of General Lit

Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. – Abdelkader

In such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma. – Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Liberation of Mankind, 1926

We love quotations; they strengthen us in our own belief; they show that some other spirit, perhaps a master-spirit, has gone thus far with us: to such we cling as the ivy to the oak. – S.J.W., “On Female Education,” in The Christian Teacher (National Review), 1835

It is a rich storehouse for those who love quotations. It is as full of fine bon mots as a Christmas pudding is full of plums. – “Fitz-Greene Halleck as a Poet,” Hours at Home: A Popular Monthly of Instruction

Don’t you love quotations? I am immensely fond of them; a certain proof of erudition…. [I]f you should happen to write an insipid poem… send it to me, and my fiat shall crown you with immortality. – Frances Brooke, Lady Julia Mandeville , 1763

…the curious hunter-up of rare quotations… the young and struggling scribbler… – William Francis Henry King, “Introduction,” Classical and Foreign Quotations, 18

…the taste of the finely-worded truth rolled upon the tongue as its thought is revolved in the mind. – William Francis Henry King, “Introduction,” Classical and Foreign Quotations, 18

It has been said that death ends all things. This is a mistake. It does not end the volume of practical quotations, and it will not until the sequence of the alphabet is so materially changed as to place D where Z now stands. – Harper’s Bazar: Facetiæ, September 1, 1888, quoted in A Dictionary of

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