Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Roux, Joseph

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Seneca

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

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

Benjamin, Walter

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

13.

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

Dan Quayle

14.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Doctor Who

16.

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

Andre Malraux

17.

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

18.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

20.

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

Anatole France

21.

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

22.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

23.

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

Baldwin, James

24.

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

Orson Welles

25.

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

26.

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

David H. Comins

27.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

Rudyard Kipling

31.

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

32.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

36.

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

Brendan Francis

37.

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

Hassan, Ihab

38.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

39.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

40.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

41.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

42.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

43.

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

44.

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

Mark Twain

45.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

46.

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

47.

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

Talmud, The

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

Malcolm, Janet