Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Benjamin, Walter

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

Orson Welles

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

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

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

Cross, Amanda

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

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

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

David H. Comins

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Ambrose Bierce

13.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

14.

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

15.

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

Odets, Clifford

16.

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

Samuel Johnson

17.

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

Doctor Who

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.

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

Baldwin, James

20.

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

21.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

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

23.

Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara... are as germane to our highly technological, computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.

Alinsky, Saul

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.

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

26.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

27.

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

28.

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

Seneca

29.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

30.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

31.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

32.

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

Rudyard Kipling

33.

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

34.

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

Morely, John

35.

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

Hassan, Ihab

36.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

37.

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

Edward Young

38.

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

39.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

40.

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

Robert Benchley

41.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

42.

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

Samuel Johnson

43.

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

Dan Quayle

44.

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

C. E. Montague

45.

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

46.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

George Bernard Shaw

50.

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

Woolf, Virginia