[L]iterature is a garden of weeds as well as flowers… – Henry Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteen

What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us! – James Russell Lowell

The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight. – Samual McChord Crothers

Literature is the echo of life. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847), paraphrase