Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

Morely, John

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

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

Brendan Francis

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

Cross, Amanda

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

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

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

Ambrose Bierce

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Mark Twain

14.

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

Rudyard Kipling

15.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

16.

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

Seneca

17.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

18.

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

Talmud, The

19.

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

Woolf, Virginia

20.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

21.

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

22.

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

Malcolm, Janet

23.

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

24.

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

Baldwin, James

25.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

26.

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

Odets, Clifford

27.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

28.

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

29.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

30.

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

Robert Chapman

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Samuel Johnson

37.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

Dan Quayle

39.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Orson Welles

45.

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

Hassan, Ihab

46.

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

47.

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

Edward Young

48.

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

George Bernard Shaw

49.

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

50.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De