Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Odets, Clifford

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

David H. Comins

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

10.

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

11.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

12.

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

Morely, John

13.

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

Baldwin, James

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Ambrose Bierce

18.

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

Hassan, Ihab

19.

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

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Robert Chapman

25.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

26.

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

H. L. Mencken

27.

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

Talmud, The

28.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

29.

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

Mark Twain

30.

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

31.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

32.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

33.

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

Seneca

34.

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

35.

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

Benjamin, Walter

36.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

37.

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

Rudyard Kipling

38.

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

George Bernard Shaw

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

42.

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

Cross, Amanda

43.

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

44.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

45.

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

46.

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

Orson Welles

47.

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

C. E. Montague

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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