Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Andre Malraux

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

David H. Comins

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

Robert Benchley

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

C. E. Montague

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Anatole France

10.

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

Malcolm, Janet

11.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

12.

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

Brendan Francis

13.

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

14.

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

Odets, Clifford

15.

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

16.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

21.

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

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.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

24.

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

Seneca

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.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

27.

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

Woolf, Virginia

28.

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

H. L. Mencken

29.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

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.

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

Mark Twain

32.

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

Samuel Johnson

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

35.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

36.

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

Ambrose Bierce

37.

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

38.

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

Benjamin, Walter

39.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

44.

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

Hassan, Ihab

45.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

46.

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