Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

Edward Young

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.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Gates, W. I. E.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

Robert Benchley

10.

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

George Bernard Shaw

11.

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

Mark Twain

12.

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

Odets, Clifford

13.

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

14.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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 ages, may be preserved by quotation.

Benjamin Disraeli

17.

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

Anatole France

18.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

19.

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

Benjamin, Walter

20.

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

Talmud, The

21.

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

Seneca

22.

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

23.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

24.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

25.

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

David H. Comins

26.

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

H. L. Mencken

27.

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

Cross, Amanda

28.

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

29.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

30.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Hassan, Ihab

34.

I not only use all the brains I have but all I can borrow.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

39.

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

Dan Quayle

40.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

41.

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

Doctor Who

42.

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

43.

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

Baldwin, James

44.

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

Rudyard Kipling

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Brendan Francis