Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Robert Benchley

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Doctor Who

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

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

Robert Benchley

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

10.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Oscar Wilde

14.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

15.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

16.

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

17.

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

Anatole France

18.

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

Rudyard Kipling

19.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

20.

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

Samuel Johnson

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

25.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

26.

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

27.

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

Cross, Amanda

28.

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

Brendan Francis

29.

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

Talmud, The

30.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Samuel Johnson

33.

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

George Bernard Shaw

34.

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

Benjamin, Walter

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.

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

37.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

38.

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

Morely, John

39.

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

40.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

41.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

42.

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

Malcolm, Janet

43.

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

44.

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

Odets, Clifford

45.

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

C. E. Montague

46.

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

47.

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

Orson Welles

48.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

49.

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

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