Motivational Quotes

Quotations

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

- Debord, Guy

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

George Bernard Shaw

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.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

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

David H. Comins

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

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

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

Robert M. Hamilton

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Morely, John

12.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

13.

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

14.

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

15.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

16.

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

17.

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

Samuel Johnson

18.

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

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

19.

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

Rudyard Kipling

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Doctor Who

25.

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

26.

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

Baldwin, James

27.

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

Woolf, Virginia

28.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

Debord, Guy

29.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

30.

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

Gates, W. I. E.

31.

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

32.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

34.

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

Cross, Amanda

35.

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

Benjamin, Walter

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Dan Quayle

39.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

40.

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

Edward Young

41.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

42.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

43.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

44.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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

Seneca

46.

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

Samuel Johnson

47.

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

Mark Twain

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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