For wheresoe'er I turn my ravished eyes, Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise, Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground.

-Addison,Joseph
  A Letter from Italy.

No classic resembles any previous classic, so do not be discouraged.

-Hemingway, Ernest Millar
   Advice to young writers, in McCall's, May.

A classic†something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

-Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens
  Speech on'The Disappearance of Literature'at the Nineteenth Century Club, 20 Nov. Quoted in Albert Bigelow Paine (ed) MarkTwain's Speeches (1910).