Motivational Quotes

Quotations

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

- Gates, W. I. E.

Best Quotes about Quotations

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Philip G. Hamerton

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

Wilson, Woodrow T.

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

Alfred North Whitehead

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

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

C. E. Montague

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.

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

Peacock, Thomas Love

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.

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

12.

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

13.

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.

Sophocles

14.

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

Ambrose Bierce

15.

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

16.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

17.

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

Robert Benchley

18.

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

Morely, John

19.

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

20.

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

David H. Comins

21.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.

22.

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

Orson Welles

23.

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

24.

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

Seneca

25.

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

Dan Quayle

26.

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

27.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

28.

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

29.

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

Doctor Who

30.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

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

Oscar Wilde

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Cross, Amanda

36.

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

Samuel Johnson

37.

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

Edwin P. Whipple

38.

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.

Simeon Strunsky

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

42.

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

Brendan Francis

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Rudyard Kipling

46.

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

47.

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

Woolf, Virginia

48.

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

49.

Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear.

Hassan, Ihab

50.

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