Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Edwin P. Whipple

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Samuel Johnson

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

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

Doctor Who

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

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

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.

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

Baldwin, James

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

Edwin P. Whipple

10.

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

Mark Twain

11.

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

12.

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

Anatole France

13.

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

Seneca

14.

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

15.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

16.

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

17.

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

David H. Comins

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Rudyard Kipling

21.

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

22.

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

Brendan Francis

23.

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

Samuel Johnson

24.

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

Malcolm, Janet

25.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

C. E. Montague

28.

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

Talmud, The

29.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

31.

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

Robert Chapman

32.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

33.

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

Edward Young

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Hassan, Ihab

38.

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

39.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

40.

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

41.

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

Morely, John

42.

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

Orson Welles

43.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

44.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

45.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

46.

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

Cross, Amanda

47.

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

Benjamin, Walter

48.

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

Odets, Clifford

49.

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

50.

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