Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Andre Malraux

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

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

Morely, John

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

Baldwin, James

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Cross, Amanda

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

Anatole France

11.

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

Malcolm, Janet

12.

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

Mark Twain

13.

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

14.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

15.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

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

Hassan, Ihab

18.

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

19.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

20.

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

H. L. Mencken

21.

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

22.

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

Ambrose Bierce

23.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

24.

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

Brendan Francis

25.

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

Rudyard Kipling

26.

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

Oscar Wilde

27.

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

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.

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

George Bernard Shaw

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

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

Odets, Clifford

34.

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

Robert Benchley

35.

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

36.

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

Dan Quayle

37.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

38.

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

39.

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

Edward Young

40.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

41.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

42.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

43.

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

Talmud, The

44.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

45.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

46.

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

Doctor Who

47.

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

48.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

49.

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

Seneca

50.

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