Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Fadiman, Clifton

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

George Bernard Shaw

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

An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.

Edwin P. Whipple

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.

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

Odets, Clifford

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

Malcolm, Janet

13.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

14.

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

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

Robert Chapman

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

20.

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

David H. Comins

21.

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

Andre Malraux

22.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

23.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

24.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

25.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

26.

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

Woolf, Virginia

27.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

28.

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

Anatole France

29.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

30.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

31.

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

C. E. Montague

32.

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

Samuel Johnson

33.

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

Hassan, Ihab

34.

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

Morely, John

35.

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

Doctor Who

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Ambrose Bierce

40.

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

Robert Benchley

41.

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

Dan Quayle

42.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.