Motivational Quotes

Quotations

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.

- Benjamin Disraeli

Best Quotes about Quotations

He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.

Rudyard Kipling

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

William Feather

I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether.

Alfred North Whitehead

The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

Smyth, Dame Ethel

What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?

Doctor Who

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

A book of quotations . . . can never be complete.

Robert M. Hamilton

If you have any doubts that we live in a society controlled by men, try reading down the index of contributors to a volume of quotations, looking for women's names.

Elaine Gill

10.

The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.

Dan Quayle

11.

When we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, and opening quotation is a symphony precluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

Malcolm, Janet

13.

A book that furnishes no quotations is no book -- it is a plaything.

Peacock, Thomas Love

14.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

Robert Benchley

15.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

16.

Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara... are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.

Alinsky, Saul

17.

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

Benjamin, Walter

18.

A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished.

Talmud, The

19.

A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

Joseph Roux

20.

I must claim the quoter's privilege of giving only as much of the text as will suit my purpose, said Tan-Chun. If I told you how it went on, I should end up by contradicting myself!

Cao Xueqin

21.

To be amused by what you read--that is the great spring of happy quotations.

C. E. Montague

22.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.

H. L. Mencken

23.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

24.

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.

Edwin P. Whipple

25.

Next to being witty yourself, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

26.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

27.

We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our white mythology. Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.

Hassan, Ihab

28.

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.

Robert Chapman

29.

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

Anatole France

30.

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

Andre Malraux

31.

In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.

Selden, John

32.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

Samuel Johnson

33.

He wrapped himself in quotations -- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.

Kipling, Rudyard

34.

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

Fowler, Henry W.

35.

I never have found the perfect quote. At best I have been able to find a string of quotations which merely circle the ineffable idea I seek to express.

Caldwell O'Keefe

36.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

Baldwin, James

37.

Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.

Davies, Robertson

38.

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

Roux, Joseph

39.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

40.

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied,'Verify your quotations.'

Sir Winston Churchill

41.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Sir Winston Churchill

42.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

43.

The essence of a quote is the compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single saying.

Morely, John

44.

In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.

Waugh, Evelyn

45.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.