Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Robert Benchley

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

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

Edward Young

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

Anatole France

13.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

14.

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

Seneca

15.

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

Orson Welles

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Cross, Amanda

19.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

20.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

22.

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

Robert Benchley

23.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

24.

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

Doctor Who

25.

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

26.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

27.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

28.

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

29.

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

Samuel Johnson

30.

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

31.

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

Robert Chapman

32.

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

George Bernard Shaw

33.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

34.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

35.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

36.

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

Hassan, Ihab

37.

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

Mark Twain

38.

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

39.

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

Samuel Johnson

40.

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

Baldwin, James

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

44.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

45.

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

46.

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

H. L. Mencken

47.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

48.

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

Oscar Wilde

49.

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

50.

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