Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

Kipling, Rudyard

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

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

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Hassan, Ihab

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

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

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

10.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

11.

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

Robert Benchley

12.

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

13.

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

Robert Chapman

14.

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

Doctor Who

15.

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

16.

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

George Bernard Shaw

17.

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

Andre Malraux

18.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

19.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

20.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

21.

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

Orson Welles

22.

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

Mark Twain

23.

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

24.

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

Cross, Amanda

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

28.

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

H. L. Mencken

29.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

30.

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

31.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Baldwin, James

36.

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

Brendan Francis

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Edward Young

40.

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

Talmud, The

41.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

42.

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