To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones. – Nicolas Charles Joseph Trublet

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory. – Isaac D’Israeli, “Quotation,” A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature

When you see yourself quoted in print and you’re sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation. – Laurence J. Peter, Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Times, 1977

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartletts Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. – Sir Winston Churchill