And in spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Daniel Deronda (Book II, Meeting Streams), 1876

Dr. Richard Bentley (1662-1742)… is said one day, on finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked—’Why read a book that you cannot quote?’— a saying which affords an amusing illustration of the nature and object of his literary studies. – Cyclopædia of English Literature edited by Robert Chambers, 1844

QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated. – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Attend to me, Sancho, I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and seasonably applied; but to be for ever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar. – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated from Spanish