Quotations

Some lines are born quotations, some are made quotations, and some have “quotation” thrust upon them. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk… – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, c.1598

For I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase… – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment. – Christian Nestell Bovee, “Quoters and Quoting,” Institutions and Summaries of Th

Quotation brings to many people one of the intensest joys of living…. This innocent vanity often helps us over the hard places in life; it gives us a warm little glow against the coldness of the world and keeps us snug and happy. – Bernard Darwin, May 1941, introduction to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Well, a lot of people go to Shakespeare to recognize the quotations. – James Aswell, 1936 [Popularized in 1949 by Evan Esar as “Now we sit through Shak

We who are quotatious are never truly alone, but always hear the cheerful flow of remarks made by dead writers so much more intelligent than we. – Joseph Epstein, “Quotatious,” A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991

The proverbs of a nation furnish the index to its spirit and the results of its civilization. – Timothy Titcomb (J.G. Holland), “An Exordial Essay,” Gold-foil: Hammered from Po

A single gnomic line can come to resonate with centuries of subsequent wisdom. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers… – Isaac D’Israeli, “The Philosophy of Proverbs,” Curiosities of Literature,

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory. – Isaac D’Israeli, “Quotation,” A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature

Nor must you find fault with me if I often give you what I have borrowed from my various reading, in the very words of the authors themselves. – Macrobius, translated from Latin

You complain, Velox, that the epigrams which I write are long. You yourself write nothing; your attempts are shorter. – Marcus Valerius Martialis, translated from Latin

I wonder if “an” ever occurs before “haughty” except in a quotation, or whether you can make anything sound like a quotation by adding a word like “goeth”? – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it. – Richard Chenevix Trench, Proverbs and Their Lessons, 1905

Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription. – Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric

You may get a large amount of truth into a brief space. – Attributed to Beecher in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1899