OFTEN and often I turn over in my mind the excuses, the justification of their evil practices, put forward by quotationers — if in this painful connection a painful word may be invented. A good quotation, so they maintain, is a shaft of light thrown into the dark places of memory — a welding of one’s own humble thought with that of great ones in the past — a free present to lovers of literary beauties and curiosities. These and many other things do they maintain.

But all this seems to me as nothing compared with the vital necessity of doing your job yourself. To seek, and not rest till you find an individual and adequate garment for your elusive vision is bracing to the brain whereas the other procedure is enervating. And though your own wording may give you less satisfaction than the perfect phrase you are tempted to borrow, the general quality of your work will certainly gain in the end.