The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels. – Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927)

But in the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse. – Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy, 1948

Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning. – Samuel Johnson, 1760

A vast meaning is unfolded in each line, with such power that a sentence only a line long would suffice for a whole life’s training. – Rufinus (translated from Latin), about The Sentences of Sextus