Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings. – William R. Alger

We love quotations; they strengthen us in our own belief; they show that some other spirit, perhaps a master-spirit, has gone thus far with us: to such we cling as the ivy to the oak. – S.J.W., “On Female Education,” in The Christian Teacher (National Review), 1835

Mr. [Thomas] Gray the poet has often observed to me that if a man were to form a Book of what he had seen and heard himself it must in whatever hands prove a most useful and entertaining one. – Horace Walpole, quoted in Walpoliana, 1800

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there; but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page. – Ralph Waldo Emerson