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.

Quotation lovers love rare words.

In phrases as brief as a breath worldly wisdom concentrates.

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

Quotologists encounter happy surprises, bright books by faded authors, treasures hidden under dust.

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.

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