A single gnomic line can come to resonate with centuries of subsequent wisdom.

People who rarely read long books, or even short stories, still appreciate the greatest examples of the shortest literary genres. I have long been fascinated by these short genres. They seem to lie just where my heart is, somewhere between literature and philosophy.

An anthology of quotations is a museum of utterances.

The attribution of a speaker is in fact a part of the quotation. Some statements simply are better if a certain famous person said them.

Some lines are born quotations, some are made quotations, and some have "quotation" thrust upon them.

Anatole France frankly advised, "When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Yes, indeed, but do more. Copy many well-said things. Pierce them together. Assimilate them. Make the process of reading them a way to form the mind and shape the soul. As anthologies can never be complete, we will never exhaust the ways quotations can enrich our lives.

Not everything that can be extracted appears in anthologies of quotations, in commonplace books, or on the back of Celestial Seasonings boxes. Only certain sorts of extracts become quotations.