The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well. – Elias Canetti
There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth. – Elias Canetti
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. – Elias Canetti
Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous. – Elias Canetti
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