The present volume is the result of a taste for collecting poetical quotations, which beset me in the days of my nonage, now more than half a century ago…. I read the poets diligently, and registered, in a portable form, whatever I thought apposite and striking. – Henry G. Bohn, A Dictionary of Quotations from the English Poets, 1881

In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks, and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature. – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), “Of Reading and Writing,” Thus Spake Zara

It’s amazing how much funny stuff there is…. [A] river of rich comedic milk is flowing across the land, and as fast as I skim off the cream more cream appears…. I may be doomed to wade around forever in other people’s pith. Not that it’s such a bad life. – Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said,

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book,—it is a plaything. – Thomas Love Peacock, Crotchet Castle, 1831 (The Rev. Dr. Folliott)