Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Benjamin Disraeli

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.

Dorothy Parker

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

Orson Welles

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

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

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

Rudyard Kipling

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

Baldwin, James

10.

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

Talmud, The

11.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

13.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

14.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

15.

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

Brendan Francis

16.

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

17.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Benjamin, Walter

22.

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

23.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

24.

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.

Robert Chapman

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Samuel Johnson

29.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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.

31.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

32.

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

Seneca

33.

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

34.

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

Anatole France

35.

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

36.

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

George Bernard Shaw

37.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

38.

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

Ambrose Bierce

39.

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

40.

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

Doctor Who

41.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Odets, Clifford

45.

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

C. E. Montague

46.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

47.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

48.

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

Robert Benchley

49.

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

Mark Twain

50.

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