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

[D]ifferent people have different quotational gravity. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

But proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them. – Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, 1926

Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books… – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876