Ralph Keyes calls quotation collectors "quotographers," the men and women who gather catchwords, watchwords, war words, winged words, maxims, mottos, sayings, and quips into books of a thousand pages. Through the centuries quotation collectors have saved quotations that would otherwise be lost.

Great quotation collections glean the millennia, distill essences, and battle for bragging rights about who’s bigger, who’s smarter, who’s best. Who-knows-who-said-what has a market, a history, and a hall of fame.

Quotations calcify into clichés.

Care for yourself enough to listen carefully to what you say to yourself.

Flattery.... gets its kicks by flirting with insult and ridicule.

Flattery works like a drug.

Cunning authors cut to be quoted.