Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Baldwin, James

Best Quotes about Quotations

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

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

George Bernard Shaw

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Brendan Francis

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

Alfred North Whitehead

10.

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

11.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

12.

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

13.

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

Edward Young

14.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

18.

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

Doctor Who

19.

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

20.

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

21.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

22.

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

Cross, Amanda

23.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

24.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

25.

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

C. E. Montague

26.

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

27.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Hassan, Ihab

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

35.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

36.

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

Odets, Clifford

37.

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

Morely, John

38.

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

Oscar Wilde

39.

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

40.

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

Robert Benchley

41.

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

Malcolm, Janet

42.

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

Dan Quayle

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Ambrose Bierce

46.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

47.

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

48.

Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara... are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.

Alinsky, Saul

49.

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

50.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.