You could compile, I should think, the worst book in the world entirely out of selecting passages from the best writers in the world. – G.K. Chesterton, “On Writing Badly”

Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. – Abdelkader

You complain, Velox, that the epigrams which I write are long. You yourself write nothing; your attempts are shorter. – Marcus Valerius Martialis, translated from Latin

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. – Winston Churchill, Roving Commission: My Early Life, 1930