Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

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

Samuel Johnson

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

Waugh, Evelyn

10.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

11.

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

Hassan, Ihab

12.

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

13.

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

Brendan Francis

14.

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

Benjamin, Walter

15.

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

16.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

17.

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

H. L. Mencken

18.

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.

19.

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

Cross, Amanda

20.

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

Oscar Wilde

21.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

22.

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

Woolf, Virginia

23.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

24.

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

Samuel Johnson

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

28.

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

Baldwin, James

29.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

30.

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

31.

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

Anatole France

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

36.

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

Ambrose Bierce

37.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

39.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

40.

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

41.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

42.

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

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.

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

Dan Quayle

45.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

46.

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