Only the use of footnotes enables historians to make their texts not monologues but conversations, in which modern scholars, their predecessors, and their subjects all take part. – Anthony Grafton (b.1950), The Footnote: A Curious History, “Epilogue: Some Concl

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, Verify your quotations. – Sir Winston Churchill

What a good thing Adam had — when he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before. – Mark Twain, 1867

A knowledge of general literature is one of the evidences of an enlightened mind; and to give an apt quotation at a fitting time, proves that the mind is stored with sentential lore that can always be used to great advantage by its possessor. – James Ellis, quoted in Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopædia of Prose Quota