Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Ambrose Bierce

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Mark Twain

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

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

Brendan Francis

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

George Bernard Shaw

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

Noonan, Peggy

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

Talmud, The

10.

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

11.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

12.

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

13.

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

Baldwin, James

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Andre Malraux

17.

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

Woolf, Virginia

18.

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

Ambrose Bierce

19.

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

20.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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.

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

23.

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

24.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

25.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

26.

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

Odets, Clifford

27.

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

Robert Benchley

28.

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

29.

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

Seneca

30.

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

31.

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

H. L. Mencken

32.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

33.

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

David H. Comins

34.

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

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.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Orson Welles

40.

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

C. E. Montague

41.

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

42.

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

Malcolm, Janet

43.

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

44.

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

Samuel Johnson

45.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

46.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

47.

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