“Of all writers, there are none whom I despise more than anthologists, who search on all sides for scraps out of other people’s works, which they cram into their own like slabs of turf into a lawn. They are not better than compositors arranging letters so that in combinations they will form a book, for which they have done nothing but provide the use of their hands. I should like the originality of a book to be respected, and it seems to me that there is a kind of profanation in removing its component parts from their sanctuary and exposing them to contempt when they do not deserve it.
    When a man has nothing new to say, why doesn’t he keep quiet? Why do things have to be used twice over? ‘But I want to put them in a new order.’ ‘What a clever thing to do! You come into my library, you move books from a high shelf to a low one, and from a low shelf to a high one: a fine piece of work that is!’”

—Montesquieu, Persian Letters, 1721, translated by C.J.Betts, 1973.