Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

- Simeon Strunsky

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Cross, Amanda

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

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

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

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

Malcolm, Janet

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

Edward Young

13.

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

14.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

15.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

16.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

17.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

18.

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

19.

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

Anatole France

20.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

24.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

25.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

26.

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

27.

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

Odets, Clifford

28.

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

29.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

30.

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

31.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

32.

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

H. L. Mencken

33.

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

Dan Quayle

34.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

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

George Bernard Shaw

36.

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.

37.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

38.

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

Robert Chapman

39.

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

40.

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

C. E. Montague

41.

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

Woolf, Virginia

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Doctor Who

47.

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

Samuel Johnson

48.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

49.

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