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

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

David H. Comins

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

C. E. Montague

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

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

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

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

Anatole France

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

Malcolm, Janet

10.

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

11.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Morely, John

15.

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

Mark Twain

16.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

17.

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

Hassan, Ihab

18.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

19.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

20.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

21.

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

22.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

23.

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

Baldwin, James

24.

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

Cross, Amanda

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.

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

Robert Benchley

27.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

28.

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

29.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Woolf, Virginia

33.

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

34.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

35.

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

Talmud, The

36.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

37.

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

38.

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

Orson Welles

39.

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

40.

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

Brendan Francis

41.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

42.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

43.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

44.

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.

45.

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

George Bernard Shaw

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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