I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape machine, except that you can’t unplug me. – Joseph Epstein, “Quotatious,” A Line Out for a Walk: Familiar Essays, 1991

Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk… – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, c.1598

[T]here are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion. – Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift, 1963, translated from Russian by Michael Scammell