Don’t you love quotations? I am immensely fond of them; a certain proof of erudition…. [I]f you should happen to write an insipid poem… send it to me, and my fiat shall crown you with immortality. – Frances Brooke, Lady Julia Mandeville , 1763

A book of quotations… can never be complete. – Robert M. Hamilton

Dr. [Richard] Bentley’s son reading a novel, the Doctor said, “Why read a book which you cannot quote?” – Walpoliana (Horace Walpole, John Pinkerton), “Useless Reading,” January 1800

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