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

In such a case the writer is apt to have recourse to epigrams. Somewhere in this world there is an epigram for every dilemma. – Hendrik Willem van Loon, The Liberation of Mankind, 1926

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. – Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens), Following the Equator: A Journey Around the Worl