Only the use of footnotes enables historians to make their texts not monologues but conversations, in which modern scholars, their predecessors, and their subjects all take part. – Anthony Grafton (b.1950), The Footnote: A Curious History, “Epilogue: Some Concl

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

There are plenty of good maxims in the world; we fail only in applying them. – Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), translated from the French by an unnamed transl

I don’t mind citing a bad author if the line is good. – Seneca, “On Tranquility of Mind,” translated by Moses Hadas