They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge. – Edward Bulwer Lytton

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse. – Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy, 1948

It is a rich storehouse for those who love quotations. It is as full of fine bon mots as a Christmas pudding is full of plums. – “Fitz-Greene Halleck as a Poet,” Hours at Home: A Popular Monthly of Instruction