Quotation brings to many people one of the intensest joys of living…. This innocent vanity often helps us over the hard places in life; it gives us a warm little glow against the coldness of the world and keeps us snug and happy. – Bernard Darwin, May 1941, introduction to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

To such as these we offer, with some confidence, and with no little sympathy, our collection of choice flowers, culled from the gardens of Poesy: may they refresh the mind, and gladden the heart, and beautify the path, of many a careworn toiler in the fields of labour, of whatsoever kind. – H.G. Adams, A Cyclopædia of Poetical Quotations; Consisting of Choice Passa

The reader, however, is warned not to be too sure that the author of any quotation had in mind the subject to which it is applied here. – Katharine B. Wood, “Preface,” Quotations for Occasions, 1896 [Confessional discl