Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Kipling, Rudyard

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

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

Rudyard Kipling

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

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

Anatole France

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

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

10.

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

Hassan, Ihab

11.

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

Robert Benchley

12.

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

Doctor Who

13.

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

14.

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

Orson Welles

15.

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

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

18.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Cross, Amanda

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.

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

Samuel Johnson

24.

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

Baldwin, James

25.

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

Benjamin, Walter

26.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

27.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

28.

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

Odets, Clifford

29.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

30.

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

Malcolm, Janet

31.

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

Ambrose Bierce

32.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

33.

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

George Bernard Shaw

34.

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

35.

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

Morely, John

36.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

37.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

39.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

40.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

41.

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

Edward Young

42.

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

Mark Twain

43.

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

Brendan Francis

44.

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

Dan Quayle

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Talmud, The

48.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

49.

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

50.

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