Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Edwin P. Whipple

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Anatole France

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

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

Mark Twain

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

George Bernard Shaw

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

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

Hassan, Ihab

10.

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

11.

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

Doctor Who

12.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

13.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

14.

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

15.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

20.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

21.

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

22.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

23.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

24.

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

Baldwin, James

25.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

26.

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

Woolf, Virginia

27.

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

28.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

29.

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

30.

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

Dan Quayle

31.

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

Ambrose Bierce

32.

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

Talmud, The

33.

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

Malcolm, Janet

34.

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

Orson Welles

35.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

36.

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

Samuel Johnson

37.

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

Samuel Johnson

38.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

39.

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

Cross, Amanda

40.

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

Andre Malraux

41.

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

C. E. Montague

42.

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

43.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

44.

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

45.

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

David H. Comins

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Edward Young

50.

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

H. L. Mencken