Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? – Philip Gilbert Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, 1873

A writer can get into a vast deal of trouble through misquotation. If you ever want to receive lots of mail, I recommend you get a Shakespeare quote wrong in a magazine or newspaper.” – Joseph Epstein, Foreward to Fred Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations, 2006

The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries. – Voltaire

[T]he governess… looked upon him [Mr. Swiveller] as a literary gentleman of eccentric habits, and of a most prodigious talent in quotation. – Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841