All quotation dictionaries stand on the shoulders of their predecessors, which must be consulted as part of the effort to make sure that no famous quotations are missed. – Fred R. Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations, 2006 (Acknowledgements)

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. – Winston Churchill, Roving Commission: My Early Life, 1930

Ralph Keyes calls quotation collectors “quotographers,” the men and women who gather catchwords, watchwords, war words, winged words, maxims, mottos, sayings, and quips into books of a thousand pages. Through the centuries quotation collectors have saved quotations that would otherwise be lost. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

…have the same Use with Burning-Glasses, to collect the diffus’d Rays of Wit and Learning in Authors, and make them point with Warmth and Quickness upon the Reader’s Imagination. – Jonathan Swift, “A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet: Together With a Proposal fo