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

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

Odets, Clifford

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

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Andre Malraux

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

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

Rudyard Kipling

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

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

Anatole France

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

10.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

11.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

12.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

13.

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

Seneca

14.

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

Benjamin, Walter

15.

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

Ambrose Bierce

16.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

Malcolm, Janet

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

C. E. Montague

20.

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

Samuel Johnson

21.

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

Cross, Amanda

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.

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

24.

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

Morely, John

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Dan Quayle

28.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

29.

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

Robert Benchley

30.

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

Baldwin, James

31.

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

32.

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

Edward Young

33.

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

Brendan Francis

34.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

35.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

36.

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

37.

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

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.

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

40.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

41.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

42.

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

Doctor Who

43.

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

Oscar Wilde

44.

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

45.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

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

Mark Twain

47.

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

Orson Welles

48.

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

49.

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

Talmud, The

50.

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

Edwin P. Whipple