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

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Robert M. Hamilton

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

Hassan, Ihab

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

C. E. Montague

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

Anatole France

10.

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

Doctor Who

11.

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

Samuel Johnson

12.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Edward Young

18.

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

19.

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

Robert Benchley

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Woolf, Virginia

24.

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

25.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

29.

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

Odets, Clifford

30.

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

Cross, Amanda

31.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

32.

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

Seneca

33.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

34.

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

Rudyard Kipling

35.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

36.

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

Orson Welles

37.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

38.

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

David H. Comins

39.

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

40.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

41.

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

Mark Twain

42.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

43.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

44.

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

45.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

46.

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

George Bernard Shaw

47.

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

48.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

49.

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

50.

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