Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Brendan Francis

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Andre Malraux

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.

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

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

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

David H. Comins

10.

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

Woolf, Virginia

11.

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

12.

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

Oscar Wilde

13.

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

Dan Quayle

14.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

15.

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

Benjamin, Walter

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Baldwin, James

19.

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

Anatole France

20.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

21.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

22.

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

23.

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

Brendan Francis

24.

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

25.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

26.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

28.

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

Ambrose Bierce

29.

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

H. L. Mencken

30.

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

Orson Welles

31.

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

Edward Young

32.

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

Morely, John

33.

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

34.

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

C. E. Montague

35.

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

Samuel Johnson

36.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

37.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

38.

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

Mark Twain

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

45.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

46.

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

47.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

48.

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

49.

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

Rudyard Kipling

50.

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