Maxims are texts to which we turn in danger or sorrow, and we often find what seems to have been expressly written for our use. – Attributed to George Eliot in Sayings: Proverbs, Maxims, Mottoes by Charles F. S

Misquotation is quotology’s swamp. Amateur quoters mix and mangle Shakespeare and Scripture. Professors gaffe and printers bungle. It’s a mess we must wade into. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries. – Voltaire

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