Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Brendan Francis

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

Gates, W. I. E.

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

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.

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

Robert Chapman

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

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

Odets, Clifford

10.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

11.

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

12.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

13.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Edward Young

19.

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

C. E. Montague

20.

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

Samuel Johnson

21.

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

Oscar Wilde

22.

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

23.

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

David H. Comins

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

28.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

30.

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

Benjamin, Walter

31.

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

Rudyard Kipling

32.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

33.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

34.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

35.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

36.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

37.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

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

Anatole France

39.

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

H. L. Mencken

40.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

41.

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

Samuel Johnson

42.

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

Dan Quayle

43.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

44.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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

46.

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

Doctor Who

47.

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

Morely, John

48.

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

49.

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.