Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Morely, John

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

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

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

Andre Malraux

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

Odets, Clifford

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

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

Robert Benchley

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Talmud, The

10.

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

C. E. Montague

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Malcolm, Janet

14.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

15.

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

Doctor Who

16.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

17.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

22.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

23.

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

Hassan, Ihab

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.

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

Ambrose Bierce

26.

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

27.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

28.

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

29.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

30.

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

Samuel Johnson

31.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

32.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

33.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

34.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

35.

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

36.

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

Cross, Amanda

37.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

39.

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

40.

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

Samuel Johnson

41.

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

42.

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

Benjamin, Walter

43.

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

44.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Orson Welles

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

50.

In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.