Quotation brings to many people one of the intensest joys of living…. This innocent vanity often helps us over the hard places in life; it gives us a warm little glow against the coldness of the world and keeps us snug and happy. – Bernard Darwin, May 1941, introduction to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Oh, to say something so fine, so memorable, that it carries across time, oceans, and languages! – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

Gnomic wisdom, however, is notoriously polychrome, and proverbs depend for their truth entirely on the occasion they are applied to. Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it… – George Santayana, “Chapter VIII: Prerational Morality,” The Life of Reason: Volu

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876