Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

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

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 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

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

Samuel Johnson

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

Fowler, Henry W.

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

George Bernard Shaw

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

Edward Young

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Malcolm, Janet

13.

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

14.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

15.

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

Doctor Who

16.

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

17.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

18.

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

Seneca

19.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Ambrose Bierce

22.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

23.

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

24.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

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.

Hesketh Pearson

26.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

27.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

30.

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

C. E. Montague

31.

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

32.

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

David H. Comins

33.

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

Dan Quayle

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

37.

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

Anatole France

38.

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

Oscar Wilde

39.

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