Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

- Debord, Guy

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

Orson Welles

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

Andre Malraux

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

C. E. Montague

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

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

13.

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

Samuel Johnson

14.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

15.

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

Ambrose Bierce

16.

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

Talmud, The

17.

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

18.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

19.

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

Samuel Johnson

20.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

21.

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

H. L. Mencken

22.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

23.

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

24.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Brendan Francis

31.

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

32.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

33.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

34.

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

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

Robert Chapman

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

41.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

42.

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

Anatole France

43.

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

Morely, John

44.

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

Robert Benchley

45.

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

Cross, Amanda

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Rudyard Kipling

50.

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

Odets, Clifford