Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Ambrose Bierce

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

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

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

10.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

11.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

12.

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

Talmud, The

13.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

16.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

17.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

18.

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

Baldwin, James

19.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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

Samuel Johnson

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Cross, Amanda

25.

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

Dan Quayle

26.

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

27.

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

Ambrose Bierce

28.

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

29.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

30.

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

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.

Pearson, Hesketh

32.

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

Malcolm, Janet

33.

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

Samuel Johnson

34.

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

Mark Twain

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

39.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

41.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

42.

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

43.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

44.

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

Brendan Francis

45.

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

Odets, Clifford

46.

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