Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Baldwin, James

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Edwin P. Whipple

10.

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

Mark Twain

11.

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

12.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

13.

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

14.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

15.

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

16.

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

Seneca

17.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

18.

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

Samuel Johnson

19.

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

David H. Comins

20.

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

Oscar Wilde

21.

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

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.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

24.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

25.

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

26.

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

Cross, Amanda

27.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Odets, Clifford

31.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

32.

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

Orson Welles

33.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

34.

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

Brendan Francis

35.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

36.

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

Benjamin, Walter

37.

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

38.

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

39.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

40.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

42.

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

Robert Chapman

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

47.

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

Dan Quayle

48.

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

Andre Malraux

49.

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

C. E. Montague

50.

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