The present volume is the result of a taste for collecting poetical quotations, which beset me in the days of my nonage, now more than half a century ago…. I read the poets diligently, and registered, in a portable form, whatever I thought apposite and striking. – Henry G. Bohn, A Dictionary of Quotations from the English Poets, 1881

[A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp… that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages! – William Mathews, “Self-Reliance,” Getting on in the World; Or, Hints on Success

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

Often we were rescued by that ever-present help in time of trouble, the beloved benefactor known only as “Anonymous.” – Frank Spencer Mead (1898–1982), preface to 12,000 Religious Quotations, 19