Motivational Quotes

Quotations

I didn't really say everything I said.

- Yogi Berra

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

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

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

George Bernard Shaw

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

Edward Young

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

Robert Chapman

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

Kipling, Rudyard

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

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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

17.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

18.

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

Malcolm, Janet

19.

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

20.

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

Samuel Johnson

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

24.

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

Odets, Clifford

25.

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

26.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

27.

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

Baldwin, James

28.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

29.

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

Oscar Wilde

30.

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

Benjamin, Walter

31.

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

Andre Malraux

32.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Hesketh Pearson

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

Brendan Francis

36.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

37.

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

Dan Quayle

38.

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

Samuel Johnson

39.

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

Ambrose Bierce

40.

I didn't really say everything I said.

Yogi Berra

41.

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

Orson Welles

42.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

43.

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

Mark Twain

44.

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

Morely, John

45.

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

46.

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

Doctor Who

47.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

Woolf, Virginia

50.

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