Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Morely, John

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

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

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

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Robert M. Hamilton

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

10.

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

Woolf, Virginia

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

14.

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

Anatole France

15.

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

C. E. Montague

16.

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

Talmud, The

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Brendan Francis

20.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

21.

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

Cross, Amanda

22.

The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.

Dan Quayle

23.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

24.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

25.

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

26.

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

Seneca

27.

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

28.

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

Orson Welles

29.

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

Doctor Who

30.

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

31.

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

Benjamin, Walter

32.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

35.

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

Andre Malraux

36.

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

H. L. Mencken

37.

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

Robert Benchley

38.

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

Robert Chapman

39.

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

40.

I must claim the quoter's privilege of giving only as much of the text as will suit my purpose, said Tan-Chun. If I told you how it went on, I should end up by contradicting myself!

Cao Xueqin

41.

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

Samuel Johnson

42.

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

David H. Comins

43.

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

Oscar Wilde

44.

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