Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Benjamin Disraeli

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

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

H. L. Mencken

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

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

Robert M. Hamilton

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

Talmud, The

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

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

Orson Welles

10.

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

Ambrose Bierce

11.

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

12.

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

Woolf, Virginia

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

Anatole France

15.

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

16.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

George Bernard Shaw

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

21.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

22.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

23.

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

David H. Comins

24.

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

Brendan Francis

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

29.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

30.

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

Odets, Clifford

31.

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

Mark Twain

32.

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

Edward Young

33.

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

34.

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

Robert Chapman

35.

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

Malcolm, Janet

36.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

37.

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

Oscar Wilde

38.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

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

Andre Malraux

40.

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

Samuel Johnson

41.

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

Seneca

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

45.

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

46.

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

Baldwin, James

47.

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

48.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

49.

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

Hassan, Ihab

50.

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

Rudyard Kipling