We sometimes think of quotations as extracts from larger texts, but some quotations originated complete unto themselves.

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.

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.

Unless created as freestanding works, quotations resemble "found" art. They are analogous, say, to a piece of driftwood identified as formally interesting enough to be displayed in an art museum or to a weapon moved from an anthropological to an artistic display.... The presenter of found art, whether material or verbal, has become a sort of artist. He has not made the object, but he has made it as art.

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

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.

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