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

Quotation brings to many people one of the intensest joys of living…. This innocent vanity often helps us over the hard places in life; it gives us a warm little glow against the coldness of the world and keeps us snug and happy. – Bernard Darwin, May 1941, introduction to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

In phrases as brief as a breath worldly wisdom concentrates. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876