Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Baldwin, James

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Kipling, Rudyard

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

Robert Benchley

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

Talmud, The

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

11.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

12.

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

Edward Young

13.

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

Orson Welles

14.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Benjamin, Walter

18.

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

Anatole France

19.

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

20.

Sontag, Susan

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

24.

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

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

George Bernard Shaw

27.

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

Hassan, Ihab

28.

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

29.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

30.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

31.

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

32.

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

Cross, Amanda

33.

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

Ambrose Bierce

34.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

35.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

36.

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

Oscar Wilde

37.

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

38.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

39.

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

40.

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

Morely, John

41.

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

Samuel Johnson

42.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

43.

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