When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it. – Anatole France, “The Creed”

You will find professed quotations from authors, of the correctness of which you will not be satisfied; and how important is it to be able to satisfy yourself by examining the originals! – Theodore Dwight, quoted in President Dwight’s Decisions of Questions Discu

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there; but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perish the men who said our good things before us! – Aelius Donatus, quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1886