They have written volumes out of which a couplet of verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell that survives a deluge. – Edward Bulwer Lytton

An anthology of quotations is a museum of utterances. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011

To such as these we offer, with some confidence, and with no little sympathy, our collection of choice flowers, culled from the gardens of Poesy: may they refresh the mind, and gladden the heart, and beautify the path, of many a careworn toiler in the fields of labour, of whatsoever kind. – H.G. Adams, A Cyclopædia of Poetical Quotations; Consisting of Choice Passa

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own. – James Russell Lowell