Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Ambrose Bierce

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

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.

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

C. E. Montague

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

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

Seneca

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

Cross, Amanda

10.

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

Rudyard Kipling

11.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Hassan, Ihab

15.

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

Samuel Johnson

16.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

17.

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

Ambrose Bierce

18.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

19.

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

Edward Young

20.

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

Baldwin, James

21.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

22.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

23.

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

Malcolm, Janet

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Doctor Who

27.

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

Morely, John

28.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

29.

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

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

32.

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

33.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

34.

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

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

David H. Comins

37.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

38.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

39.

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

40.

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

41.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

42.

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

43.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

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

Samuel Johnson

45.

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

46.

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

Dan Quayle

47.

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

Oscar Wilde

48.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

49.

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

50.

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