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Quotes about quotations

49 quotes from 37 people

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Like your body your mind also gets tired so refresh it by wise sayings.
AAli599–661Nahj al-Balagha
- Wisdom
She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…
W. Somerset Maugham1874–1965“The Creative Impulse”, in Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (1931)
- Humor
Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.
ECEmil Cioran1911–1995Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
- Thinking
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Preface
The purpose of aphorisms is to keep fools who have memorised them from having nothing to say.
Isaac Asimov1920–1992In Memory Yet Green (1979), p. 188
Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Comedy
When you see yourself quoted in print and you’re sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.
Laurence J. Peter1919–1990Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), p. 418
- Comedy
In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.
W. H. Auden1907–1973The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962), “Reading”
- Reading
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
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)
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands.
Robert Benchley1889–1945“Quick Quotations” in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)
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)
In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Part I, Chapter 7
- Writing
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.”
Winston Churchill1874–1965The Second World War, Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate (1951)
- Advice
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.