Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Fadiman, Clifton

Best Quotes about Quotations

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

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

Morely, John

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

Gates, W. I. E.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Ambrose Bierce

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

Brendan Francis

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

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

Robert Chapman

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

10.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

11.

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

Hassan, Ihab

12.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

13.

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

14.

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

Samuel Johnson

15.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

16.

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

Mark Twain

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Edward Young

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Talmud, The

23.

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

24.

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

Benjamin, Walter

25.

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

George Bernard Shaw

26.

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

Rudyard Kipling

27.

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

28.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

29.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

30.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

31.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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.

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

34.

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

Samuel Johnson

35.

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

Robert Benchley

36.

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

Baldwin, James

37.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

38.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

39.

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

Seneca

40.

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

41.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

42.

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

Odets, Clifford

43.

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

44.

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

C. E. Montague

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

49.

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

50.

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