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

There are gems of thought that are ageless and eternal. – Cicero, quoted in Lillian Eichler Watson, Light from Many Lamps, 1951

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

You could compile, I should think, the worst book in the world entirely out of selecting passages from the best writers in the world. – G.K. Chesterton, “On Writing Badly”