Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

David H. Comins

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

Malcolm, Janet

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

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

Morely, John

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

Talmud, The

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Anatole France

10.

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

11.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

12.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Sir Winston Churchill

13.

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

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

16.

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

Dan Quayle

17.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

20.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

21.

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

Benjamin, Walter

22.

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

Woolf, Virginia

23.

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

H. L. Mencken

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

27.

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

Orson Welles

28.

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

Samuel Johnson

29.

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

Rudyard Kipling

30.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

31.

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

Andre Malraux

32.

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

33.

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

Edward Young

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

42.

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

Baldwin, James

43.

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