How do people go to sleep? I’m afraid I’ve lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things. – Dorothy Parker, Here Lies, 1939

The present volume is the result of a taste for collecting poetical quotations, which beset me in the days of my nonage, now more than half a century ago…. I read the poets diligently, and registered, in a portable form, whatever I thought apposite and striking. – Henry G. Bohn, A Dictionary of Quotations from the English Poets, 1881

Often we were rescued by that ever-present help in time of trouble, the beloved benefactor known only as “Anonymous.” – Frank Spencer Mead (1898–1982), preface to 12,000 Religious Quotations, 19

Proverbs are the daughters of daily experience. РDutch Proverb [Quoted in P.J. Harrebom̩e, Spreekwoordenboek der Nederlandsche t