Quotation lovers love rare words. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

Some lines are born quotations, some are made quotations, and some have “quotation” thrust upon them. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

But I have long thought that if you knew a column of advertisements by heart, you could achieve unexpected felicities with them. You can get a happy quotation anywhere if you have the eye. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1923, quoted in Holmes-Laski Letters: The Correspond

Nevertheless, a maxim does not necessarily become a proverb. Many grubs never grow to butterflies; and a maxim is only a proverb in its caterpillar stage—a candidate for a wider sphere and longer flight than most are destined to attain. – “Proverbs Secular and Sacred,” The North British Review, February 1858