I had continued jotting down good lines—once the eyes and ears are awakened to the possibilities they can’t be put back to sleep… – Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said,

Attend to me, Sancho, I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and seasonably applied; but to be for ever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar. – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated from Spanish

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

He picked something out of everything he read. – Pliny