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

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there; but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

People will accept your idea more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first. – David H. Comins, quoted in The Washingtonian, Volume14, 1978

Only roam on, therefore, all fearless, in the many garden of romantic chivalrous poesy, which drawing within its circle all that is glorious and inspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its flowers originally grew. – C.O. Müller (Karl Otfried Müller), Introduction to a Scientific System