Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Robert M. Hamilton

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

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

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

Cross, Amanda

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

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

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

Brendan Francis

10.

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

11.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

12.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

13.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

14.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

15.

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

Samuel Johnson

16.

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

C. E. Montague

17.

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

Hassan, Ihab

18.

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

19.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

20.

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

Robert Chapman

21.

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

Talmud, The

22.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

23.

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

24.

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

Oscar Wilde

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

29.

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

Orson Welles

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

Baldwin, James

33.

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

Malcolm, Janet

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Samuel Johnson

37.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

39.

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

Rudyard Kipling

40.

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

41.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

42.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

43.

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

Ambrose Bierce

44.

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

45.

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

Anatole France

46.

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

47.

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

David H. Comins

48.

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