To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound. – Christian Nestell Bovee, “Thought,” Institutions and Summaries of Thought, 1862

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own. – James Russell Lowell

Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize. – Isaac D’Israeli, “Quotation,” A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature