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

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

H. L. Mencken

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

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

Hassan, Ihab

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

Talmud, The

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Baldwin, James

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

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

Andre Malraux

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

12.

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

Dan Quayle

13.

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

Edward Young

14.

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

Seneca

15.

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

16.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

17.

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

18.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

19.

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

20.

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

Samuel Johnson

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.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

25.

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

Ambrose Bierce

26.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

27.

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

George Bernard Shaw

28.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

29.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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

Odets, Clifford

31.

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

32.

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

Cross, Amanda

33.

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

Robert Chapman

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Orson Welles

39.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

42.

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

Doctor Who

43.

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

Brendan Francis

44.

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

Morely, John

45.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

46.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

50.

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