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
A book that furnishes no quotations is no book—it is a plaything.
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) English Satirist, Novelist, Author
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
A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The obscurest sayings of the truly great are often these which contain the germ of the profoundest and most useful truths.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) Italian Patriot, Political Leader
Our best thoughts come from others.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
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 (1926–2022) Queen of United Kingdom
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Fidelity to the subject’s thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.
—Janet Malcolm (1934–2021) American Writer, New Yorker Journalist
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 one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
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
Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of ages may be preserved by quotation.
—Isaac D’Israeli (1766–1848) English Writer, Scholar
Luminous quotations atone, by their interest, for the dullness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.
—Nicolas-Charles-Joseph Trublet (1697–1770) French Clergyman, Critic
I hate quotations.
—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 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
The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that everything must soon be reduced to extracts.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
One whom it is easier to hate, but still easier to quote—Alexander Pope.
—Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) English Politician, Essayist
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
—Anonymous
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
Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books 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 bookworm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking.
—Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) British Crime Writer
There are two kinds of marriages—where the husband quotes the wife and where the wife quotes the husband.
—Clifford Odets (1906–63) American Playwright, Screenwriter, Director
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
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