Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? – Philip Gilbert Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, 1873

Ancient and modern languages teem with happily expressed sentiments of more or less force and beauty, sufficiently individualized and excellent to warrant their reproduction and classification. – Maturin M. Ballou, January 1886, preface to Edge-Tools of Speech

The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

In literary composition a well-chosen quotation lights up the page like a fine engraving… – William Francis Henry King, “Introduction,” Classical and Foreign Quotations, 18