Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Baldwin, James

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

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

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

Baldwin, James

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

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Malcolm, Janet

10.

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

11.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

12.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

13.

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

14.

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

Woolf, Virginia

15.

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

Hassan, Ihab

16.

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

17.

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

H. L. Mencken

18.

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

19.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

20.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

21.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Benjamin, Walter

26.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

27.

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

Ambrose Bierce

28.

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

29.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

30.

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

Seneca

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.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

33.

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

C. E. Montague

34.

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

Edward Young

35.

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

Doctor Who

36.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

37.

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

Cross, Amanda

38.

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

39.

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

Orson Welles

40.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

41.

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

42.

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

David H. Comins

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

46.

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

Robert Benchley

47.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

48.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

49.

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

50.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson