Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Talmud, The

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

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

Hassan, Ihab

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

Cross, Amanda

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

Orson Welles

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

Seneca

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

13.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

14.

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

15.

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

Samuel Johnson

16.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

Mark Twain

17.

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

Benjamin, Walter

18.

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

George Bernard Shaw

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

Rudyard Kipling

24.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Anatole France

28.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

29.

Hassan, Ihab

30.

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

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.

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

Doctor Who

33.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

34.

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

35.

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

Odets, Clifford

36.

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

Edward Young

37.

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

Woolf, Virginia

38.

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

39.

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

David H. Comins

40.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

41.

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

Morely, John

42.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

43.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

44.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

45.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

49.

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

50.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De