Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

C. E. Montague

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

Talmud, The

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

Fadiman, Clifton

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

Anatole France

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

Benjamin, Walter

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

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

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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.

The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

Smyth, Dame Ethel

12.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

14.

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

Baldwin, James

15.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

16.

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

17.

Great speeches have always had great soundbites. The problem now is that the young technicians who put together speeches are paying attention only to the soundbite, not to the text as a whole, not realizing that all great soundbites happen by accident, which is to say, all great soundbites are yielded up inevitably, as part of the natural expression of the text. They are part of the tapestry, they aren't a little flower somebody sewed on.

Noonan, Peggy

18.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

19.

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

Robert Chapman

20.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

21.

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

Ambrose Bierce

22.

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

H. L. Mencken

23.

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

Brendan Francis

24.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

25.

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

Oscar Wilde

26.

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

27.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

28.

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

Woolf, Virginia

29.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

30.

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

Rudyard Kipling

31.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

32.

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

33.

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

Seneca

34.

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

Odets, Clifford

35.

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

Cross, Amanda

36.

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

37.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

38.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

39.

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

Malcolm, Janet

40.

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

41.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

42.

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

Samuel Johnson

43.

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

Morely, John

44.

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

Robert Benchley

45.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

50.

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

Andre Malraux