Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Gates, W. I. E.

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Rudyard Kipling

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

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.

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

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Samuel Johnson

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

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.

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

Oscar Wilde

12.

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

13.

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

Woolf, Virginia

14.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

15.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

20.

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

21.

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

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.

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

Brendan Francis

24.

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

C. E. Montague

25.

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

David H. Comins

26.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

27.

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

Dan Quayle

28.

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

29.

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

Talmud, The

30.

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

Cross, Amanda

31.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

32.

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

Samuel Johnson

33.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

34.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Odets, Clifford

38.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

39.

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

40.

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

Edward Young

41.

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

42.

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

George Bernard Shaw

43.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

44.

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

Doctor Who

45.

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

46.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

50.

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

Baldwin, James