Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Orson Welles

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

George Bernard Shaw

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

Benjamin Disraeli

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

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

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.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Kipling, Rudyard

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

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

10.

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

11.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde

12.

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

13.

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

Cross, Amanda

14.

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

Rudyard Kipling

15.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

16.

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

Samuel Johnson

17.

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

Ambrose Bierce

18.

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

Morely, John

19.

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

David H. Comins

20.

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

Hassan, Ihab

21.

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

Talmud, The

22.

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

Edward Young

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.

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

25.

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

Orson Welles

26.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

27.

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

28.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

29.

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

30.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

31.

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

32.

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

Doctor Who

33.

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

34.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

35.

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

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.

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

Anatole France

38.

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

Woolf, Virginia

39.

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

Samuel Johnson

40.

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

Robert Chapman

41.

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

42.

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

Robert Benchley

43.

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

Baldwin, James

44.

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

45.

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

Benjamin, Walter

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Dan Quayle

49.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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