Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

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

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

Dan Quayle

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

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Robert M. Hamilton

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

Oscar Wilde

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

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

10.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

12.

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

13.

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

Baldwin, James

14.

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

15.

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

Brendan Francis

16.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

17.

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

Orson Welles

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

21.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

22.

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

23.

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

Andre Malraux

24.

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

David H. Comins

25.

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

26.

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

Talmud, The

27.

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

28.

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

Malcolm, Janet

29.

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.

Sontag, Susan

30.

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

Rudyard Kipling

31.

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

32.

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

Mark Twain

33.

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

H. L. Mencken

34.

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

Seneca

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Hassan, Ihab

42.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

43.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

44.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

45.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

46.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

47.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

48.

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

George Bernard Shaw

49.

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

50.

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