Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Anatole France

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Malcolm, Janet

10.

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

H. L. Mencken

11.

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

Robert Benchley

12.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

13.

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

14.

I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing.

Fadiman, Clifton

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

18.

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

Hassan, Ihab

19.

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

Baldwin, James

20.

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

Samuel Johnson

21.

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

Andre Malraux

22.

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

23.

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

Dan Quayle

24.

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

Cross, Amanda

25.

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

Woolf, Virginia

26.

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

27.

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

Seneca

28.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

29.

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

30.

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

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.

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

33.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Brendan Francis

40.

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

41.

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

David H. Comins

42.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

43.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

44.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

45.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

46.

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

Edward Young

47.

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

48.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

49.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

50.

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