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Quotes about quotations

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Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834), Quotation.
To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man’s speech with other men’s jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.
Robertson Davies1913–1995Dangerous Jewels (1960)
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882May 1849
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Letters and Social Aims (1876), Quotation and Originality
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Letters and Social Aims (1876), Quotation and Originality
A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Letters and Social Aims (1876), Quotation and Originality
The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer’s ideas or personality.
Emma Goldman1869–1940Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Preface
- Reading
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?
PHPhilip Hamerton1834–1894
A book of quotations…can never be complete.
RHRobert M. Hamilton
Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.
Aldous Huxley1894–1963Jesting Pilate (1926), Part IV: America
But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in few words.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784The Rambler (1750–1752), No. 175 (19 November 1751)
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV (8 May 1781)
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Preface
He wrapped himself in quotations⁠—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936The Finest Story in the World (1893).
I don’t like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what’s even worse, of being quoted exactly.
Stanley Kubrick1928–1999“Kubrick on Barry Lyndon: An interview with Michel Ciment” (1982)