Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles. The ancient lawyers used to quote at the bar till they had stagnated their own cause. – Isaac D’Israeli, “Quotation,” A Second Series of Curiosities of Literature

[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

And in spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Daniel Deronda (Book II, Meeting Streams), 1876

A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool. – Joseph Roux (1834–1905), Meditations of a Parish Priest, 1886, translated