Quotations

"To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it."

"Like your body, your mind also gets tired, so refresh it by wise sayings."

"Books of quotations are an elemental model of how culture is perpetuated, the wisdom of the trite passed on to posterity, to be added to, edited, and modified by subsequent generations."

"Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author. Perhaps the next highest is, when a writer of any kind is so considerable that you go to the labor and pains of endeavoring to refute him before the public, the very doing of which is an incidental admission of his talent and power."

"The man whose book is filled with quotations, has been said to creep along the shore of authors, as if he were afraid to trust himself to the free compass of reasoning. I would rather defend such authors by a different allusion, and ask whether honey is the worse for being gathered from many flowers."

"In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments."

"Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books: else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not."

"There is not less wit nor invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a talent."

"It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul."

"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."

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

"One whom it is easier to hate, but still easier to quote—Alexander Pope."

"Its fall is entirely owing to itself, the seeds of death were in it from the commencement. The powers of satire and of derision, which it exercised with as little mercy as modesty, have proved, in the result, very humble powers; and after usurping an authority, the most dictatorial and audacious, a general doubt is now expressed as to the ability with which it was at one time supposed to have been conducted. Of this there certainly can be no dispute that it will be difficult to name as many volumes in the English language which afford so few quotable passages; and perhaps there can be no better proof of the original mediocrity of the contributors, whatever may have been the merit of a few occasional articles."

"Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, magazines, and folios, is the right of Quotation."

"Shall we not rejoice then and revel in the glorious liberty of extract, and quote to the thousandth line? Shall we not have pages like the Pyramids?"

"I must stop to lament, that we cannot evince an admiring gratitude towards other excellent things by a like readiness of quotation: that we cannot, for instance, quote a star that we have been watching; or a hue of sunset; or a friend's voice, and his shake of the hand (I had almost said heart); or a beautiful picture..."

"Life itself is a quotation."

"At all events, the next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit."

"A great thought is a great boon, for which God is to be the first thanked, then he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the man who is the first to quote it to us."

"Quotations can be valuable, like raisins in the rice pudding, for adding iron as well as eye appeal."

"Horace ou Despréaux l’a dit avant vous.—Je le crois sur votre parole; mais je l’ai dit comme mien. Ne puis-je pas penser après eux une chose vraie, et que d’autres encore penseront après moi?"

"At all times pseudoprofound aphorisms have been more popular than rigorous arguments."

"All which he understood by rote, And, as occasion serv'd, would quote."

"With just enough of learning to misquote."

"Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms."

"The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well."

"You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world."

"To copy beauties, forfeits all pretence To fame—to copy faults, is want of sense."

"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."

"There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it."

"Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation."

"Exclusively of the abstract science, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism."

"Why are not more gems from our early prose writers scattered over the country by the periodicals?…But Great old books of the great old authors 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 neither time nor means to get more. Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford."

"Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants."

"Quotation brings to many one of the intensest joys of living."

"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."

"Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy — on experience, the mistress of their Masters. They go about puffed up and pompous, dressed and decorated with [the fruits], not of their own labours, but of those of others. And they will not allow me my own. They will scorn me as an inventor; but how much more might they — who are not inventors but vaunters and declaimers of the works of others — be blamed."

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

"I love them because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizedly wiser than oneself."

"One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings."

"One may quote till one compiles."

"The art of quotation requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract."

"The greater part of our writers have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them: and those who never quote in return are seldom quoted."

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

"In quotation not only does language turn on itself, but it does so word by word and expression by expression, and this reflexive twist is inseparable from the convenience and universal applicability of the device. Here we already have enough to draw the interest of the philosopher of language."

"Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me, the ability to think in quotations."

"Abigail Adams: You do not need to quote great men to show you are one."

"A book which hath been culled from the flowers of all books."

"A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good."

"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we quote. We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religion, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs by imitation."

"Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."

"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."

"Quotation confesses inferiority."

"Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better."

"We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates."

"When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it. Give references? Why should you? Either your readers know where you have taken the passage and the precaution is needless, or they do not know and you humiliate them."

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

"People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations."

"But quotations and aphorisms are generally just verbal Christmas presents; enticingly done up in pretty paper and ribbons, but once you get them open they generally turn out to be just socks."

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

"Quotation, Sir, is a good thing; there is a community of mind in it : classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world."

"Just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations. ... The great minds of the period—Milton, Bacon, Locke—were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book. There is a distinct self-help quality to the early descriptions of commonplacing’s virtues: in the words of one advocate, maintaining the books enabled one to “lay up a fund of knowledge, from which we may at all times select what is useful in the several pursuits of life.”"

"The Rules of Misquotation:"

": Axiom 1. Any quotation that can be altered will be."

":: Corollary 1A: Vivid words hook misquotes in the mind."

":: Corollary 1B: Numbers are hard to keep straight."

":: Corollary 1C: Small changes can have a big impact (or: what a difference an a makes)."

":: Corollary 1D: If noted figures don't say what needs to be said, we'll say it for them."

":: Corollary 1E: Journalists are a less than dependable source of accurate quotes."

":: Corollary 1F: Famous dead people make excellent commentators on current events."

": Axiom 2. Famous quotes need famous mouths."

":: Corollary 2A: Well-known messengers get credit for clever comments they report from less celebrated mouths."

":: Corollary 2B: Particularly quotable figures receive more than their share of quotable quotes."

":: Corollary 2C: Comments made about someone might as well have been said by that person."

":: Corollary 2D: Who you think said something may depend on where you live."

":: Corollary 2E: Vintage quotes are considered to be in the public domain."

":: Corollary 2F: In a pinch, any orphan quote can be called a Chinese proverb."

"Truth is not something in the distance; there is no path to it, there is neither your path nor my path; there is no devotional path, there is no path of knowledge or path of action, because truth has no path to it. The moment you have a path to truth, you divide it, because the path is exclusive; and what is exclusive at the very beginning will end in exclusiveness. The man who is following a path can never know truth because he is living in exclusiveness; his means are exclusive, and the means are the end, are not separate from the end. If the means are exclusive, the end is also exclusive. So there is no path to truth, and there are not two truths. Truth is not of the past or the present, it is timeless; the man who quotes the truth of the Buddha, of Shankara, of Christ, or who merely repeats what I am saying, will not find truth, because repetition is not truth. Repetition is a lie."

"I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly."

"C'est souvent hasarder un bon mot et vouloir le perdre quo de le donner pour sien."

"'Twas not an Age ago since most of our Books were nothing but Collections of Latin Quotations; there was not above a line or two of French in a Page."

"An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence."

"He that has but ever so little examined the citations of writers, cannot doubt how little credit the quotations deserve when the originals are wanting ; and consequently how much less quotations of quotations can be relied on."

"Though old the thought and oft exprest, 'Tis his at last who says it best."

"The French public seem to estimate the master pieces of their favorite tragic poets chiefly by the number of fine quotable passages they supply; while their critics estimate their worth by their conformity with certain purely artificial rules."

"It is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation."

"What lunkhead said, "there's no such thing as a free lunch"? According to the Columbia World of Quotations, no one is exactly sure."

"I got $25 from Reader's Digest last week for something I never said. I get credit all the time for things I never said."

"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…"

"Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams."

"Comme quelqu'un pourroit dire de moy, que j'ay seulement faict icy un amas de fleurs estrangieres, n'y ayant fourny du mien que le filet à les lier."

"Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d'autant plus me dire."

"… I have seen books made of things neither studied nor ever understood … the author contenting himself for his own part, to have cast the plot and projected the design of it, and by his industry to have bound up the fagot of unknown provisions; at least the ink and paper his own. This may be said to be a buying or borrowing, and not a making or compiling of a book."

"Quando mi viene in mente un bell'aforisma, lo metto in conto a Montesquieu, od a La Rochefoucauld. Non si sono mai lamentati."

"I've always felt that if a thing had been said in the best way, how can you say it better? … If you are charmed by an author, I think it's a very strange and invalid imagination that doesn't long to share it. Somebody else should read it."

"We are what we have deitalicized."

"The undigested is quoted, the assimilated is not."

"All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly."

"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."

"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."

"When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation."

"The poem, although widely differing in subject from any of Mrs. Lewis' prior compositions, and far superior to any of them in general vigor, artistic skill, and assured certainty of purpose, is nevertheless easily recognizable as the production of the same mind which originated "Florence" and "The Forsaken." We perceive, throughout, the same passion, the same enthusiasm, and the same seemingly reckless abandon of thought and manner which we have already mentioned as characterizing the writer. We should have spoken also, of a fastidious yet most sensitive and almost voluptuous sense of Beauty. These are the general traits of "The Child of the Sea:" but undoubtedly the chief value of the poem, to ordinary readers, will be found to lie in the aggregation of its imaginative passages—its quotable points."

"Stop quoting laws, we carry weapons!"

"The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is."

"Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations."

"He ranged his tropes, and preached up patience, Backed his opinion with quotations."

"Quotes are just fancy ways of stating the obvious"

"Those quotations were really quite obscure. Anyone can see that he is a very well-read man."

"My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw – which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker."

"An analogous process I shall call Churchillian Drift ... Whereas quotations with an apothegmatic feel are normally ascribed to Shaw, those with a more grandiose or belligerent tone are, as if by osmosis, credited to Churchill. All humorous remarks obviously made by a female originated, of course, with Dorothy Parker. All quotations in translation, on the other hand, should be attributed to Goethe (with "I think" obligatory)."

"It seems simple: a quotation is a repetition of a saying : But leading language philosophers — Frege, Tarski, Geach, Quine, Searle — recognized that quotations are trouble. Donald Davidson was taught that quotation is “a somewhat shady device” and an “invitation to sin.”"

"Always to verify your references."

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool."

"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."

"I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking."

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought."

"The little honesty existing among authors is to be seen in the outrageous way in which they misquote from the writings of others."

"I shall never be ashamed to quote a bad author if what he says is good."

"The best ideas are common property."

"Whatever is well said by anyone is mine."

"I ask for your indulgence when I march out quotations. This is the double syndrome of men who write for a living and men who are over forty. The young smoke pot — we inhale from our Bartlett's."

"They had been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps."

"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

"Fine phrases I value more than bank-notes. I have ear for no other harmony than the harmony of words. To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for."

"It's better to be quotable than to be honest."

"Whoever only reads in order to transcribe wise and shining Remarks, without entering into the Genius and Spirit of the Author, as it is probable that he will make no very judicious Extract, so he will be apt to trust to that Collection in all his Compositions, and be misled out of the regular Way of thinking, in order to introduce those Materials which he has been at the Pains to gather: And the Product of all this will be found a manifest and incoherent Piece of Patchwork."

"A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation."

"It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view—and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite."

"I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you."

"A witty saying proves nothing."

"Some great writers produce a profound effect by their work as a whole, but are not readily quotable; others have the gift of condensing their meaning into a striking phrase. The conscious and deliberate literary artist will generally be found to belong to the latter class. Pope, for example, is the most quotable writer in English after Shakespeare. Stevenson stands intermediate. On the whole, he rather diffuses his meaning, and makes it an atmosphere enfolding everything; but at times his skill in words concentrates itself in a sentence or phrase, or even in a word."

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

"I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff."

"To patchwork learn'd quotations are allied, Both strive to make our poverty our pride."

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