Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Ambrose Bierce

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Robert M. Hamilton

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

Gates, W. I. E.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Talmud, The

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

Anatole France

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Doctor Who

10.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

11.

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

Benjamin, Walter

12.

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

Andre Malraux

13.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

14.

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

15.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

George Bernard Shaw

19.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

20.

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

Dan Quayle

21.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

22.

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

23.

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

David H. Comins

24.

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

25.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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.

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

28.

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

Robert Benchley

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.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

31.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

32.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

33.

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

Robert Chapman

34.

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

35.

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

Cross, Amanda

36.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

37.

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

38.

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

Malcolm, Janet

39.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

40.

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

H. L. Mencken

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Hassan, Ihab

45.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Morely, John

49.

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

C. E. Montague

50.

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