Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

David H. Comins

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

10.

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

11.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

15.

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

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.

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

18.

I pick my favorite quotation and store them in my mind as ready armor, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.

Burns, Robert

19.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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.

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

H. L. Mencken

22.

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

23.

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

Robert Benchley

24.

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

Samuel Johnson

25.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

26.

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

27.

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

Doctor Who

28.

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

Odets, Clifford

29.

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

30.

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

Cross, Amanda

31.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

32.

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

Brendan Francis

33.

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

34.

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

Dan Quayle

35.

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

Rudyard Kipling

36.

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

37.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

38.

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

39.

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

George Bernard Shaw

40.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

41.

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

42.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

43.

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

Woolf, Virginia

44.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

45.

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

Talmud, The

46.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

47.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

49.

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

Hassan, Ihab

50.

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

Orson Welles