Nor must you find fault with me if I often give you what I have borrowed from my various reading, in the very words of the authors themselves. – Macrobius, translated from Latin

Dr. Richard Bentley (1662-1742)… is said one day, on finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked—’Why read a book that you cannot quote?’— a saying which affords an amusing illustration of the nature and object of his literary studies. – Cyclopædia of English Literature edited by Robert Chambers, 1844

One man’s wit, and all men’s wisdom. – John Russell, definition of a proverb

Apothegms to thinking minds are the seeds from which spring vast fields of new thought, that may be further cultivated, beautified, and enlarged. – Ramsay, as quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: A Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotation