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

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

Andre Malraux

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

Davies, Robertson

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

Morely, John

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

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

David H. Comins

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

10.

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

Edward Young

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

George Bernard Shaw

14.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

15.

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

Dan Quayle

16.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

17.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

18.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

19.

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

Talmud, The

20.

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

Seneca

21.

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

22.

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

Anatole France

23.

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

Rudyard Kipling

24.

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

Hassan, Ihab

25.

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

Robert Benchley

26.

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

27.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

32.

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

Baldwin, James

33.

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

34.

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

Brendan Francis

35.

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

Samuel Johnson

36.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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

38.

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

Orson Welles

39.

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

Samuel Johnson

40.

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

Mark Twain

41.

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