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.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
The essence of a quote is the compression of a mass of thought and observation into a single saying.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Political Leader, Writer, Editor, Journalist
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.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
A verse may find him who a sermon flies.
—George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh Anglican Poet, Orator, Clergyman
A good thought is a great boon for which God is first to be thanked; next, he who is the first to utter it; and then in a lesser but still a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
Have at you with a proverb.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–38) English Poet, Novelist
A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.—What he quotes he fills with his own voice and humor, and the whole cyclopedia of his table-talk is presently believed to be his own.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) British Novelist, Essayist, Biographer
I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
I quote others in order to better express myself.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Life itself is a quotation.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
A couplet of verse, a period of prose, may cling to the rock of ages as a shell that survives a deluge.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
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 (1715–63) Chinese Writer
Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Live so that your friends can defend you, but never have to.
—Arnold Glasow (1905–98) American Businessman
Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Whoever reads only to transcribe or quote shining remarks without entering into the genius and spirit of the author, will be apt to be misled out of a regular way of thinking, and the product of all this will be found to be a manifest incoherent piece of patchwork.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we quote,—We quote not only books and proverbs, but arts, sciences, religions, customs, and laws; nay, we quote temples and houses, tables and chairs by imitation.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Selected thoughts depend for their flavor upon the terseness of their expression, for thoughts are grains of sugar or salt, that must be melted in a drop of water.
—Jean Antoine Petit-Senn (1792–1870) Swiss Poet
I improve on misquotation.
—Cary Grant (1904–86) British-American Film Actor
Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were… in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
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.
—Ihab Hassan (1925–2015) Egypt-born American Literary Theorist, Writer
A thing is never too often repeated which is never sufficiently learned.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
I pick my favorite quotation and store them in my mind as ready armor, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.
—Robert Burns (1759–96) Scottish Poet, Songwriter
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.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
It is the beauty and independent worth of the citations, far more than their appropriateness, which have made Johnson’s Dictionary popular even as a reading-book.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
I pluck up the goodlisome herbs of sentences by pruning, eat them by reading, digest them by musing, and lay them up at length in the high seat of memory by gathering them together; that so, having tasted their sweetness, I may the less perceive the bitterness of life.
—Queen Elizabeth II (b.1926) Queen of United Kingdom
To quote copiously and well requires taste, judgment and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
In literature, quotation is good only when the writer whom I follow goes my way, and, being better mounted than I, gives me a cast, as we say; but if I like the gay equipage so well as to go out of my road, I had better have gone afoot.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
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.
—Saul Alinsky (1909–72) American Community Organizer, Political Theorist
Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote, and think they grow immortal as they quote.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
With just enough of learning to misquote.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
—Arthur Helps (1813–75) English Dramatist, Essayist
The proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly exploded in the air.
—William Gilmore Simms (1806–70) American Poet, Novelist, Historian
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 Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear.
—Ihab Hassan (1925–2015) Egypt-born American Literary Theorist, Writer
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.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
Fine words!—I wonder where you stole them.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English Mathematician, Philosopher