Themes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Rules of Misquotation:"

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

"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.”"

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations."

"Quotation confesses inferiority."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"One may quote till one compiles."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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