Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Robert Chapman

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Mark Twain

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

Talmud, The

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Samuel Johnson

13.

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

Robert Benchley

14.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

15.

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

Brendan Francis

16.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

17.

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

18.

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

Benjamin, Walter

19.

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

Doctor Who

20.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Seneca

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

27.

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

28.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

29.

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

Edward Young

30.

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

Cross, Amanda

31.

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

Morely, John

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

George Bernard Shaw

35.

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

36.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

37.

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

Malcolm, Janet

38.

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

39.

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

Oscar Wilde

40.

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

Baldwin, James

41.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

42.

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