Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Doctor Who

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Kipling, Rudyard

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats --and one always secretes too much jelly.

Woolf, Virginia

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

Orson Welles

10.

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

Seneca

11.

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

12.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

13.

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

14.

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

Brendan Francis

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Andre Malraux

19.

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

20.

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

21.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

22.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

23.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

24.

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.

Pierre Bayle

25.

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

26.

Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear.

Hassan, Ihab

27.

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

Rudyard Kipling

28.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

29.

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

Baldwin, James

30.

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

Samuel Johnson

31.

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

H. L. Mencken

32.

Stronger than an army is a quotation whose time has come.

Gates, W. I. E.

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Benjamin, Walter

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Anatole France

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

42.

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

Edward Young

43.

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

44.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

45.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

George Bernard Shaw

46.

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

Morely, John

47.

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