Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Robert Benchley

Best Quotes about 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

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

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

Dan Quayle

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Edward Young

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

Mark Twain

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

Benjamin Disraeli

10.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Sir Winston Churchill

11.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Ambrose Bierce

15.

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

Orson Welles

16.

To be amused by what you read--that is the great spring of happy quotations.

C. E. Montague

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

19.

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

20.

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

Benjamin, Walter

21.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

22.

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

23.

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

Odets, Clifford

24.

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

Samuel Johnson

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

28.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

29.

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

George Bernard Shaw

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.

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

Cross, Amanda

32.

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

Robert Chapman

33.

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

34.

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

Talmud, The

35.

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

Hassan, Ihab

36.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

37.

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

Brendan Francis

38.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

39.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Malcolm, Janet

44.

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

Seneca

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

50.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.