Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, <br>And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Quotation ... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether.

He was as fresh as is the month of May.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.