Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

David H. Comins

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Odets, Clifford

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

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

Brendan Francis

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.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

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

Orson Welles

12.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

13.

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

14.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

15.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

16.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

17.

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

George Bernard Shaw

18.

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

19.

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

Oscar Wilde

20.

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.

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.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Ambrose Bierce

24.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

25.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

Robert Benchley

29.

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

Dan Quayle

30.

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

Anatole France

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

35.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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.

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

Rudyard Kipling

38.

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

39.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

40.

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

Baldwin, James

41.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

42.

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