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

Dr. Richard Bentley (1662-1742)… is said one day, on finding his son reading a novel, to have remarked—’Why read a book that you cannot quote?’— a saying which affords an amusing illustration of the nature and object of his literary studies. – Cyclopædia of English Literature edited by Robert Chambers, 1844

Attend to me, Sancho, I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and seasonably applied; but to be for ever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar. – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote de la Mancha, translated from Spanish