The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be

Isaac D’Israeli, lover of letters and father of a prime minister, declares: “The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.” In these words he unveils a truth about memory and tradition: that human thought, fleeting like the breath, can be caught and preserved in the vessel of words. A quotation is not mere ornament, but a treasury, holding within it the distilled wisdom of the wise and the lessons of generations. By repeating and preserving them, we carry forward the experience of ages so that it may guide those who come after us.

The ancients themselves practiced this sacred art. The proverbs of Solomon, short and shining, were gathered not only to instruct his own people but to echo across millennia. Homer’s verses, sung by bards, were not his alone but the collective memory of a people, preserved by repetition. In every culture, the quotation became a seed—small in form but vast in power—carrying the essence of truth through the storm of time.

History bears witness in the sayings of Confucius. His disciples, gathering his words in the Analects, ensured that his insights into virtue and society outlived his fragile body. Without their preservation, the wisdom of one man would have perished; with their devotion, the thought of a sage became the moral compass of a civilization. Thus D’Israeli’s words ring true: it is through careful quotation that the greatness of the past is woven into the fabric of the future.

D’Israeli also reminds us of humility. To quote another is to confess that truth is larger than ourselves, that we are heirs to treasures we did not create. Each quotation is an act of reverence, a bow before those who saw further, suffered more, or understood deeper. By carrying their voices into our own time, we admit that wisdom is not bound to one age but is the inheritance of all who seek it.

Let the generations remember: to despise quotation is to sever the chain of learning; to honor it is to keep alive the spirit of the great and the noble. For in a phrase well remembered, the dead speak again, the ancient rises to instruct the modern, and the experience of ages becomes a lamp for those who walk today. Treasure quotations, then, not as borrowed words, but as living torches passed from hand to hand, bearing the eternal flame of human wisdom.