Miss Amesbury is especially happy in the use of quotations—and an apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence. – L.E. Landon, Romance and Reality, 1832

Not everything that can be extracted appears in anthologies of quotations, in commonplace books, or on the back of Celestial Seasonings boxes. Only certain sorts of extracts become quotations. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

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

A true quotation cannot be divorced from the character who uttered or scribbled it; it should say as much about the person quoted as about the particular subject referred to, and for this reason an anthology of quotations should be a kind of portrait gallery. – Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, “Introduction”