[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

A knowledge of general literature is one of the evidences of an enlightened mind; and to give an apt quotation at a fitting time, proves that the mind is stored with sentential lore that can always be used to great advantage by its possessor. – James Ellis, quoted in Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopædia of Prose Quota

[D]ifferent people have different quotational gravity. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said that “you are what you eat,” but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what you quote. – Joseph Epstein, “Quotatious,” A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991