Besides, it happens (how, I cannot tell) that an idea launched like a javelin in proverbial form strikes with sharper point on the hearer’s mind and leaves implanted barbs for meditation… – Desiderius Erasmus, Adages

Quotology disdains no quotations whatsoever, a duty it bears stoutly, with bloodshot eyes and sagging shelves. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

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

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