It is probably to Talleyrand, that Receiver-General of waif wit and estray epigram, that more sayings have been wrongly attributed than to any other modern. – William Mathews, “Quotation and Misquotation,” in North American Review, January

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? – Philip Gilbert Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, 1873

You could compile, I should think, the worst book in the world entirely out of selecting passages from the best writers in the world. – G.K. Chesterton, “On Writing Badly”