Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Doctor Who

Best Quotes about Quotations

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.

Sontag, Susan

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

Alfred North Whitehead

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

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Philip G. Hamerton

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

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.

Pearson, Hesketh

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

10.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Seneca

11.

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

Anatole France

12.

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

Baldwin, James

13.

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.

Dorothy Parker

14.

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

15.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

Mark Twain

16.

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

17.

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

Noonan, Peggy

18.

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

Robert Chapman

19.

There are two kinds of marriages -- where the husband quotes the wife and where the wife quotes the husband.

Odets, Clifford

20.

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

Morely, John

21.

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

22.

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Edward Young

23.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

Samuel Johnson

24.

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

Dan Quayle

25.

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

C. E. Montague

26.

I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.

Fadiman, Clifton

27.

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

28.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

29.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

30.

Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have not the time nor means to get more.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

31.

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole, its body brevity, and wit its soul.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

32.

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

33.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

34.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

35.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

36.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

40.

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.

Marlene Dietrich

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.

That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.

Cross, Amanda

43.

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

44.

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

Benjamin, Walter

45.

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

46.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

48.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

49.

A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.

Brendan Francis

50.

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.

Hesketh Pearson