Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Fadiman, Clifton

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Edward Young

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

Dan Quayle

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

Mark Twain

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

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

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

10.

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

Orson Welles

11.

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

12.

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

Morely, John

13.

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

14.

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

Ambrose Bierce

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

18.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Robert Benchley

22.

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

23.

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

Robert Chapman

24.

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

Anatole France

25.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

26.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

27.

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

28.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

29.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

30.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

31.

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

Woolf, Virginia

32.

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

Samuel Johnson

33.

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

Cross, Amanda

34.

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

Odets, Clifford

35.

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

George Bernard Shaw

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.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

38.

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

39.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

40.

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

Malcolm, Janet

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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