A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue. – Isaac D’Israeli, “Quotation,” A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature

Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings. – William R. Alger

Idly curious race of grammarians, ye who dig up by the roots the poetry of others; unhappy bookworms that walk on thorns, defilers of the great… away with you, bugs that bite secretly the eloquent. – Antiphanes of Macedonia, in The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, “Book XI: The Conviv