One of the great attractions of quotations is that they are rich in ideas which can be tailored to specific purposes. – Robert Irvine Fitzhenry (1918–2008), The Harper Book of Quotations

The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

Perish the men who said our good things before us! – Aelius Donatus, quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech by Maturin M. Ballou, 1886

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there; but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page. – Ralph Waldo Emerson