Quotation Quotes

187 Sourced quotes

I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking. - Lord Peter Wimsey

Dorothy L. Sayers

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought. - Lord Peter Wimsey

Dorothy L. Sayers

Most public speakers talk so badly that a sudden quotation from a poet appears in their babble like a lady in a slum.

Austin O'Malley

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

I was reminded of a quotation by the famous American physicist Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist. Weinberg said: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it, you'd have good people doing good things, and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion".

Richard Dawkins

If physicists could not quote in the text, they would not feel that much was lost with respect to advancement of knowledge of the natural world. If historians could not quote, they would deem it a disastrous impediment to the communication of knowledge about the past. A luxury for physicists, quotation is a necessity for historians, indispensable to historiography.

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.

I heard the quotation read in a summary of the speech. I thought the words sounded familiar and suddenly it dawned on me that they were out of my little book.

The cult of the individual of Stalin should, of course be overcome. But can it be said, as it has been claimed, that Stalin himself was the sponsor of this cult of the individual? The cult of the individual should be overthrown without fail, but was it necessary and was it right to go to such lengths as to point the finger at any one who mentioned Stalin's name, to look askance at any one who used a quotation from Stalin with great speed and zeal? Certain persons smashed statues raised to Stalin and changed the names of cities that had been named after him. But why go any further?

The everlasting quotation-lover dotes on the husks of learning.

Maria Edgeworth

A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline—sharp, clear, whole.

If you use a colloquialism or a slang word or phrase, simply use it; do not draw attention to it by enclosing it in quotation marks. To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.

William Strunk Jr.

To transpose the quotation... 'I had slept and dreamed that life was duty,
But waked to find that life was beauty.'

Margaret Prescott Montague

You know what my favourite quotation is?…It's from Chaucer... Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese."

When I want to use a quotation, I can very seldom do it properly, as the difficulty arises where to look for it in order to work it up.

Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar

Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

The Achilles heel of quotation collections: An initial error in one will be repeated so often by others that over time it gains authority through repetition alone.

There is no theam more plentifull to scan
Than is the glorious goodly frame of man.
A mighty maze! but not without a plan, Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle i, Line 1, Quotation 1.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

The Quantum Universe has a quotation from me in every chapter — but it's a damn good book anyway.

Richard Feynman

My impression of the American people can be summarized by a quotation from Benjamin Franklin, "Those things that hurt instruct!" I realised that people in this part of the world meet their problems head on. They attempt to get out of them rather than suffer them.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Your lesson plan is excellent — except for the Emily Dickinson line: "There is no frigate like a book." The sentiment is lovely, the quotation is apt — only trouble is the word "frigate." Just try to say it in class — and your lesson is over.

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—a Claude or Titian, for example.

Samuel Laman Blanchard

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.

Samuel Laman Blanchard

A quotation is a polished prefabricated unit of thought or discourse which has many connotations and associations built into it. It is thus like the text for a sermon, serving as a point of departure for many lines of thought.

Alan Lindsay Mackay

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.

Isaac D'Israeli