Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

- Debord, Guy

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

H. L. Mencken

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

Orson Welles

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

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

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

Malcolm, Janet

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

Robert M. Hamilton

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

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

Edward Young

10.

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

Robert Chapman

11.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

12.

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

Talmud, The

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

16.

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.

17.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

Samuel Johnson

19.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

20.

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

21.

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

Odets, Clifford

22.

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

23.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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.

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.

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

George Bernard Shaw

27.

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

28.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

29.

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

Andre Malraux

30.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Hassan, Ihab

33.

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

Cross, Amanda

34.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

35.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

36.

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

Morely, John

37.

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

Ambrose Bierce

38.

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

39.

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

Oscar Wilde

40.

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

41.

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

Woolf, Virginia

42.

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

43.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

44.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

45.

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

46.

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

Rudyard Kipling

47.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.