Cunning authors cut to be quoted. – Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010

We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims, 1876

…though many a gatherer has carried his basket through these diamond districts of the mind… – William Rounseville Alger, “The Utility and the Futility of Aphorisms,” The Atla

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit. – Edwin P. Whipple, lecture delivered before the Boston Mercantile Library Associa

When two seemingly conflicting thoughts have made it to proverb or aphorism status, usually, in the ambivalence of life, both are true. – Robert Irvine Fitzhenry (1918–2008), The Harper Book of Quotations