Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

- Hesketh Pearson

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Morely, John

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

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

C. E. Montague

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

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

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

Robert Benchley

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

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Orson Welles

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Talmud, The

13.

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

Malcolm, Janet

14.

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

15.

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

H. L. Mencken

16.

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

Oscar Wilde

17.

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

Cross, Amanda

18.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

19.

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

Mark Twain

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Andre Malraux

24.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Life itself is a quotation.

Jorge Luis Borges

29.

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

30.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

31.

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

32.

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

Odets, Clifford

33.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

34.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

36.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

37.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

38.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

42.

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.

43.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

44.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

45.

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

Samuel Johnson

46.

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