Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Malcolm, Janet

Alfred North Whitehead

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

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

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

David H. Comins

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

10.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

11.

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

Anatole France

12.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

13.

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

14.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

15.

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.

16.

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

Mark Twain

17.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

22.

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

Benjamin, Walter

23.

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

Odets, Clifford

24.

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

Talmud, The

25.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

26.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

27.

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

28.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

29.

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

H. L. Mencken

30.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

33.

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

Doctor Who

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Morely, John

37.

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

Oscar Wilde

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

41.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

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

Hassan, Ihab

43.

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

44.

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

Samuel Johnson

45.

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

Ambrose Bierce

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.

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

48.

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

Seneca

49.

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

50.

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

Kipling, Rudyard