Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

George Bernard Shaw

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

Baldwin, James

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

Doctor Who

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

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

Hassan, Ihab

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

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Anatole France

15.

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

Robert Chapman

16.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

Cross, Amanda

20.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

21.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

22.

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

Samuel Johnson

23.

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

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

27.

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

Odets, Clifford

28.

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

29.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

30.

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

Edward Young

31.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

32.

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

H. L. Mencken

33.

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

34.

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

Ambrose Bierce

35.

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

36.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

37.

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

Orson Welles

38.

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

Andre Malraux

39.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

40.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

41.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

42.

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

Oscar Wilde

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.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

45.

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

46.

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

C. E. Montague

47.

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

48.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

49.

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

Malcolm, Janet

50.

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