The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than in the poem. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art”

Idly curious race of grammarians, ye who dig up by the roots the poetry of others; unhappy bookworms that walk on thorns, defilers of the great… away with you, bugs that bite secretly the eloquent. – Antiphanes of Macedonia, in The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, “Book XI: The Conviv

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