You could compile, I should think, the worst book in the world entirely out of selecting passages from the best writers in the world. – G.K. Chesterton, “On Writing Badly”

Reframing an extract as a quotation constitutes a kind of coauthorship. With no change in wording, the cited passage becomes different. I imagine that the thrill of making an anthology includes the opportunity to become such a coauthor. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

Misquotation is quotology’s swamp. Amateur quoters mix and mangle Shakespeare and Scripture. Professors gaffe and printers bungle. It’s a mess we must wade into. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

I have drag-netted the ocean, as well as the numerous narrow streams and wide rivers of literature… – Frank J. Wilstach, A Dictionary of Similes, 1916