Motivational Quotes

Quotations

I quote others in order to better express myself.

- Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

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

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

Mark Twain

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

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

Robert Chapman

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

11.

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

Cross, Amanda

12.

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

Rudyard Kipling

13.

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

Dan Quayle

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

16.

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

Edward Young

17.

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

18.

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

Morely, John

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Hassan, Ihab

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Seneca

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

32.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

33.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

34.

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

35.

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

Brendan Francis

36.

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

Malcolm, Janet

37.

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

Andre Malraux

38.

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

39.

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

Samuel Johnson

40.

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

41.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

42.

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

Odets, Clifford

43.

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

Ambrose Bierce

44.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

45.

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

Samuel Johnson

46.

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

47.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

48.

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

Baldwin, James

49.

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

Anatole France

50.

In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.