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

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

Is all literature eavesdropping, and all art Chinese imitation? our life a custom, and our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, from a hundred charities? – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

Quotable quotes are coins rubbed smooth by circulation. – Louis Menand, “Notable Quotables: Is there anything that is not a quotation?” 20