On collecting quotations (series: notes to myself)

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Newton. 
Phrases that roundly capture juicy thoughts. Nothing to add, nothing to subtract, impeccable syntax, perfect semantics. Tiny shiny shells, to be collected "like a boy playing on the seashore", in a file of memorabilia. I save quotations from the waves of forgetfulness, before time grinds them into the sand relentlessly filling my mind.

Locke. 
The collector of quotations is fastidious. One's own quotations are not those to be found in cheap lists or memorised by everyone. No. For the collector, they must have the purity and uniqueness of an unknown gem dug up by himself. The effort in finding them, then extracting and saving them, is part of their value. For the quotations are semantic capital that the collector "removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property". They are his quotations of someone else. The double possession makes them precious.

Goethe. 
Quotations make the collector a better person because they are a constant reminder of what can be achieved with ingenuity and care, patience and tenacity, chiselling the right sentence. They prove to the collector that language is a fine craft. Sometimes, perhaps only rarely, there is no further editing. Not because undoable, but because improvements become impossible. Life can be a flawless equilibrium of words, like Faust's "beautiful moment", and yet without time coming to an end.

Eliot. 
Quotations are helpful, for one day their better nature than this collector's poor writing will come in handy, filling an unbearable void. Because the mind "cannot bear too much reality" that is meaningless.

Frost. 
Quotations are like the dog that forces the owner to get out of his house. They motivate more reading. Because their value is also in the walks the collector must take, through endless lines of words, looking for them. Who knows where a precious new one may be hiding, in all the millions of books I never opened? And yet I doubt "if I should ever come back" to read even the ones I put aside for another time. 

"Correctness of reasoning, exactness of style, the habit of getting to the bottom of every subject, and that pertinacious meditation by which real science alone can be acquired, are formed by the use of a small library well selected and well digested." T. D. Whitaker Loidis and Elmete 1816, p. 86 quoted by
Raymond Irwin The English Library (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966) p. 283.

PS "Notes to myself" is available as a book on Amazon: ow.ly/sGyh50KfRra


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