To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it. – William Rounseville Alger, “The Utility and the Futility of Aphorisms,” The Atla

You serve me a slice of raw beef, Heliodorus, and pour me out three cups of wine rawer than the beef, and then you wash me out at once with epigrams. – Lucilius, in The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, “Book XI: The Convivial and Satiric

A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue. – Isaac D’Israeli, “Quotation,” A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature

Great quotation collections glean the millennia, distill essences, and battle for bragging rights about who’s bigger, who’s smarter, who’s best. Who-knows-who-said-what has a market, a history, and a hall of fame. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010