Elizabeth Knowles - And I Quote...: A History of Using Other Peoples Words

quotation, n. 5a A passage quoted from a book, speech, or other source; (in modern use esp.) a frequently quoted passage of this nature.

(Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edn; entry updated June 2008)

Despite the certainty of the OEDs definition, quotation can be a fluid term, as a number of studies attest.), quotation is sometimes used to include both family sayings such as When in doubt tell the truth and Dont expect life to be fair, and established phrases and idioms, such as as poor as a church mouse. However, quotation in terms of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and as used in this book, represents an individual expression, in speech or writing, coined by a particular person at a particular time, even though we may now not know the details of authorship or first source. As such it differs from the broad stock of proverbs and sayings, which represent common wisdom, and the range of idiomatic phrases that have developed in the language from specific quotations. No boundaries are absolute: an established quotation may develop virtual proverbial status, or give rise to a related phrase. One of the purposes of this book is to examine the way in which this form of development takes place, and explore the links that can be traced between individual items.

Quotations are part of the fabric of the language. We are often highly conscious of them: coverage of significant events and people is frequently marked by a clustering of related quotations, often from diverse sources. The most successful quotations, which have a demonstrable longevity and are still with us today, are those that were originally unique to a particular time, place, or person (real or fictional), but that have a quality of universality that means that they can offer the perfect expression in response to another place, person, or circumstance. Frequently, of course, they may be used in a sense differing from their original context, or be subject to wordplay or natural processes of language change in which one or more vocabulary items may be changed or replaced. Such developments are often a core part of a quotations usage historythat is, the record of how, in what contexts, and in what form, a particular item has been quoted through a significant chronological period of years. (The concept of currency through a timeline is not always straightforwardtoday an Internet search for a particular string may retrieve the digitized version of a nineteenth- or twentieth-century text along with contemporary uses. How readily, in such circumstances, will older sources be distinguished by the reader?)