Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Peacock, Thomas Love

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Morely, John

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

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

Samuel Johnson

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

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

Robert Benchley

10.

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

11.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

12.

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

13.

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.

Pearson, Hesketh

14.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

15.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

16.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

17.

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

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

20.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

21.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Orson Welles

24.

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

Cross, Amanda

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Dan Quayle

29.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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.

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

32.

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

Benjamin, Walter

33.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

34.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

35.

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

Malcolm, Janet

36.

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

Seneca

37.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

38.

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

39.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

40.

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

41.

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

Rudyard Kipling

42.

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

43.

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

Talmud, The

44.

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

Mark Twain

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

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

Odets, Clifford

48.

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

Andre Malraux

49.

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

50.

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