Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Wilson, Woodrow T.

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

Odets, Clifford

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Rudyard Kipling

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

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

Dan Quayle

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Benjamin Disraeli

10.

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

11.

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

Edward Young

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Andre Malraux

15.

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

Seneca

16.

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

17.

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

Cross, Amanda

18.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

19.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

20.

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

Mark Twain

21.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

22.

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

Anatole France

23.

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

24.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

25.

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

26.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

27.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Morely, John

31.

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

Benjamin, Walter

32.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

33.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

35.

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

Talmud, The

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.

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

Baldwin, James

38.

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

C. E. Montague

39.

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

40.

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

Malcolm, Janet

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 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

43.

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

44.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

45.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

46.

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

47.

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

Orson Welles

48.

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

49.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

50.

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