Isaac D'Israeli on quotations

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.

It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.

After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde1854–1900De Profundis (1897)

A witty saying proves nothing.

Voltaire1694–1778Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Deuxième Entretien

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882May 1849