Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Hassan, Ihab

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

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

Samuel Johnson

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

George Bernard Shaw

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

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

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

Brendan Francis

10.

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

Edward Young

11.

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

Cross, Amanda

12.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

13.

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

Doctor Who

14.

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

15.

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

Samuel Johnson

16.

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

Morely, John

17.

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

18.

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

Woolf, Virginia

19.

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

Seneca

20.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

21.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

22.

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

23.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

24.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Orson Welles

28.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

29.

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

Malcolm, Janet

30.

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

Andre Malraux

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

33.

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

34.

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

David H. Comins

35.

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

Rudyard Kipling

36.

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

37.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

38.

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

39.

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

Robert Chapman

40.

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

Anatole France

41.

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

42.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

43.

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

44.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

45.

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

Talmud, The

46.

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

47.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

48.

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

Baldwin, James

49.

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

50.

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