Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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.

Best Quotes about Quotations

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

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

Odets, Clifford

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

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

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

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

Baldwin, James

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

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

Kipling, Rudyard

10.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

11.

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

12.

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

Brendan Francis

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Malcolm, Janet

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Robert Chapman

19.

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

Talmud, The

20.

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

21.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Andre Malraux

28.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

29.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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

Edward Young

31.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

32.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

33.

Fowler, Henry W.

34.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

35.

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

36.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

37.

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

Doctor Who

38.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

39.

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

Dan Quayle

40.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

41.

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

42.

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

Morely, John

43.

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

Robert Benchley

44.

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

Seneca

45.

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

Mark Twain

46.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

47.

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

48.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

49.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

50.

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

Woolf, Virginia