Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Alfred North Whitehead

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Anatole France

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

Doctor Who

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

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

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

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

10.

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

Samuel Johnson

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

14.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

15.

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

Morely, John

16.

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

Malcolm, Janet

17.

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

18.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

19.

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

20.

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

Oscar Wilde

21.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

22.

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

23.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

24.

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

David H. Comins

25.

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

26.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

27.

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

H. L. Mencken

28.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

29.

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

Mark Twain

30.

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

Robert Benchley

31.

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

Edward Young

32.

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

33.

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

Ambrose Bierce

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.

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

36.

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

Benjamin, Walter

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

A book that furnishes no quotations is no book -- it is a plaything.

Peacock, Thomas Love

41.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

42.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

43.

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.

44.

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

Talmud, The

45.

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

Brendan Francis

46.

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

47.

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

Samuel Johnson

48.

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

Rudyard Kipling

49.

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

50.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.