But further, in order to embellish it with flowers of language and gems of thought, it is not necessary for this ornamentation to be spread evenly over the entire speech, but it must be so distributed that there may be brilliant jewels placed at various points as a sort of decoration. – Cicero, De oratore

Platitude. An idea (a)that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b)that is not true. – H.L. Mencken, “The Jazz Webster,” A Book of Burlesques, 1920

The reader, however, is warned not to be too sure that the author of any quotation had in mind the subject to which it is applied here. – Katharine B. Wood, “Preface,” Quotations for Occasions, 1896 [Confessional discl

A writer can get into a vast deal of trouble through misquotation. If you ever want to receive lots of mail, I recommend you get a Shakespeare quote wrong in a magazine or newspaper.” – Joseph Epstein, Foreward to Fred Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations, 2006