Good quotations, like good thoughts, are true wealth. – Annie E. Lancaster, quoted in Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopædia of Pros

…I didn’t do anything that can properly be called research; rather, I proceeded by the methodless method of “determined browsing”— – Rudolf Flesch, on collecting excerpts for The Book of Unusual Quotations, 1957

Then your words of abuse today may turn into a universally valid principle of denigration, for words are magical formulae. They leave fingermarks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye becomes the footprints of history. One ought to watch one’s every word. – Franz Kafka, quoted by Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka

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