Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

- Simeon Strunsky

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Malcolm, Janet

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

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

Anatole France

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10.

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

Baldwin, James

11.

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

Talmud, The

12.

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

13.

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

Doctor Who

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

17.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

18.

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

Brendan Francis

19.

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

David H. Comins

20.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

21.

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

Seneca

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

24.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

26.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

27.

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

28.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

29.

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

George Bernard Shaw

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Odets, Clifford

34.

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

35.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

36.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

37.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

38.

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

Edward Young

39.

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

Hassan, Ihab

40.

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

Andre Malraux

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

49.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

50.

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

Robert Benchley