Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Wilson, Woodrow T.

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Andre Malraux

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

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

Robert Chapman

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

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Fadiman, Clifton

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

10.

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

Seneca

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.

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

Anatole France

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Woolf, Virginia

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

22.

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

Mark Twain

23.

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

Hassan, Ihab

24.

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

David H. Comins

25.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

28.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

29.

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

Rudyard Kipling

30.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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.

Hesketh Pearson

32.

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

33.

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

Samuel Johnson

34.

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

George Bernard Shaw

35.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

36.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

37.

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

38.

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

C. E. Montague

39.

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

40.

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

Samuel Johnson

41.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

42.

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

Orson Welles

43.

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

Morely, John

44.

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

Robert Benchley

45.

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

46.

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

Benjamin, Walter

47.

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

48.

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

Talmud, The

49.

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

50.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes