I don’t mind citing a bad author if the line is good. – Seneca, “On Tranquility of Mind,” translated by Moses Hadas

The divine gift is ever the instant life, which receives and uses and creates, and can well bury the old in the omnipotency with which Nature decomposes all her harvest for recomposition. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

[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

A quote is just a tattoo on the tongue. – Attributed to William F. DeVault