But further, in order to embellish it with flowers of language and gems of thought, it is not necessary for this ornamentation to be spread evenly over the entire speech, but it must be so distributed that there may be brilliant jewels placed at various points as a sort of decoration. – Cicero, De oratore

To be amused by what you read — that is the great spring of happy quotations. – C.E. Montague (1867–1928), “Quotation”

But proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them. – Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, 1926

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? – Philip Gilbert Hamerton, The Intellectual Life, 1873