Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Talmud, The

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

Baldwin, James

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

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

10.

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

Seneca

11.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

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

Robert M. Hamilton

16.

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

Malcolm, Janet

17.

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

Robert Benchley

18.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

19.

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

Mark Twain

20.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

21.

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

Brendan Francis

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

25.

The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayle may or may not make.

Dan Quayle

26.

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

27.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

28.

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

29.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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.

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

Anatole France

32.

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

Samuel Johnson

33.

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

Samuel Johnson

34.

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

Odets, Clifford

35.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Doctor Who

40.

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

Robert Chapman

41.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

42.

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

Cross, Amanda

43.

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

Andre Malraux

44.

Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.

Davies, Robertson

45.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

46.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

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.

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

49.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

50.

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