Quotes about quotations

"One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well."

Alcott, Amos Bronson on quotations
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"Apothegms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feelings."

Alger, William R. on quotations   

"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 on quotations   

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

Baldwin, James on quotations   

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

Benchley, Robert on quotations
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"Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction."

Benjamin, Walter on quotations   

"The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."

Bierce, Ambrose on quotations   

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"Life itself is a quotation."

Borges, Jorge Luis on quotations
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"Next to being witty yourself, the best thing is being able to quote another's wit."

Bovee, Christian Nevell on quotations   

"Ah, yes, I wrote the Purple Cow -- I'm sorry, now, I wrote it! But I can tell you, anyhow, I'll kill you if you quote it."

Burgess, (Frank) Gelett on quotations   

"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 on quotations
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"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 on quotations   

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

Chapman, Robert on quotations   

"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."

Churchill, Winston on quotations
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"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 on quotations   

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

Cross, Amanda on quotations   

"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 on quotations   

"Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs."

Debord, Guy on quotations   

"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 on quotations   

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

Disraeli, Isaac on quotations
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"The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations
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"The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations   

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations
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"Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations   

"The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations   

"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 on quotations   

"Our best thoughts come from others."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on quotations
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"I think we must quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or amusing."

Fadiman, Clifton on quotations
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"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. on quotations   

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

Gates, W. I. E. on quotations   

"Anecdotes and maxims are rich treasures to the man of the world, for he knows how to introduce the former at fit place in conversation."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on quotations   

"Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on quotations
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"I improve on misquotation."

Grant, Cary on quotations   

"Quotations (such as have point and lack triteness) from the great old authors are an act of reverence on the part of the quoter, and a blessing to a public grown superficial and external."

Guiney, Louise Imogen on quotations   

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

Hassan, Ihab on quotations   

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

Johnson, Samuel on quotations   

"He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind."

Johnson, Samuel on quotations   

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

Johnson, Samuel on quotations   

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

Kipling, Rudyard on quotations
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