The more an idea is developed, the more concise becomes its expression: the more a tree is pruned, the better is the fruit. – Alfred Bougeart, quoted in A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedn

It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else. – Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923

The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

An anthology of quotations is a museum of utterances. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011