Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

- Hesketh Pearson

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

Orson Welles

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

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

Morely, John

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

David H. Comins

10.

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

Doctor Who

11.

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

Woolf, Virginia

12.

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

13.

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

Hassan, Ihab

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Talmud, The

18.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

20.

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.

21.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

22.

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

Samuel Johnson

23.

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

24.

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

C. E. Montague

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

27.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

28.

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

Robert Chapman

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

George Bernard Shaw

33.

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

Cross, Amanda

34.

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

35.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

36.

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

Mark Twain

37.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

38.

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

Seneca

39.

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

H. L. Mencken

40.

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

41.

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

Baldwin, James

42.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

43.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

44.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

45.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

Malcolm, Janet

50.

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