Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Robert M. Hamilton

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Odets, Clifford

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

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

10.

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

Morely, John

11.

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

Woolf, Virginia

12.

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

13.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

14.

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

Malcolm, Janet

15.

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

16.

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

Cross, Amanda

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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.

19.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

20.

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

Seneca

21.

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

Orson Welles

22.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

23.

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

24.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

25.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

26.

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

Robert Chapman

27.

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

Brendan Francis

28.

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

29.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

30.

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

31.

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

Mark Twain

32.

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

Anatole France

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

36.

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

Oscar Wilde

37.

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

George Bernard Shaw

38.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

39.

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

Ambrose Bierce

40.

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

41.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Baldwin, James

46.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

47.

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

Rudyard Kipling

48.

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