Quotation Quotes & Sayings

Life itself is a quotation. — Jorge Luis Borges

Like italics and hyphens, quotation marks are to be used as sparingly as possible. They should light the way, not darken it. — Eric Partridge

I'm a great believer in the direct quote in quotation marks and the hard fact. — Andrew Marr

As long as we encourage a culture of victim hood, said Monty, with the rhythmic smoothness of self-quotation, we will continue to raise victims. And so the cycle of underachievement continues. — Zadie Smith

Selective Biblical quotation is a favorite of leftists who interpret the Bible the same way they do the Constitution: as a Chinese menu designed to allow picking and choosing. That's because when many Democrats take the Bible as a whole, they realize how much they despise it. — Ben Shapiro

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. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them. — Nigel Rees

Opening the book is a quotation from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that sums up the Prager-Telushkin view: It was Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world ... The Jew carries the burden of God in history [and] for this has never been forgiven. — George Gilder

Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation — Willard Van Orman Quine

Quotation confesses inferiority. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotations introduced by that are regarded as in indirect discourse and not enclosed in quotation marks. — William Strunk Jr.

One [event] is the discovery of the anesthetic properties of chloroform [in 1847] by James Simpson of Scotland. Following the reports of [William] Morton's demonstration [1846], he tried ether but, dissatisfied, searched for a substitute and came upon chlorophorm. He was an obstetrician. His use of anesthesia to alleviate the pains of childbirth was violently opposed by the Scottish clergy on the ground that pain was ordained by the scriptural command, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children", and that it was impious to attempt to avert it by anesthetic agents. And it was Simpson who stilled this opposition by his own famous quotation from scripture; he pointed out that when Eve was born, God cast Adam into deep sleep before performing upon him the notable costalectomy. Anesthesia was thus permissible by scriptural precedent. — Howard Wilcox Haggard

Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called "normal" functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way? — Jacques Derrida

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.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. — Mark Twain

Sometimes it's good to lose something/someone. Because we get what we deserve, not what we desire for. — M.H. Rakib

I hate when people say "quote" when what they really mean is "quotation." How's that for a quote? — Man Martin

Was this stab in my heart, this rapture, really mine or had I merely read about it? For every feeling, every vicissitude of my passion, there would spring into my mind a quotation from the poets. Shakespeare or Donne or Heine had the exact phrase for it. Comforting, perhaps, but enraging too. Nothing ever seemed spontaneously my own. — Dorothy Bussy

Liberals dispute that Reagan won the Cold War on the basis of their capacity to put mocking quotation marks around the word, won. That's pretty much the full argument: Restate a factual proposition with sneering quote marks. — Ann Coulter

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

The Bible ... provides no guide to reading the Bible. In fact, it is full of such inconsistencies, contradictions, lacunae, obscurities, baffling tales, and poetic imagery that to quote it at all is to select from conflicting alternative passages. Every quotation is therefore necessarily an interpretation. — James P. Carse

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements. — Warren Buffett

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. — Jeanette Winterson

When I first collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions. — Samuel Johnson

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world. — Samuel Johnson

And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose. — Tahereh Mafi

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

... in the latter half of the twentieth century, postmodernism upended everything. Universal truths were no longer accepted. "Truth" (postmodernism loves quotation marks) was instead a social construct that depended heavily on cultural context. Nothing was either true or false, but was instead open to interpretation. — Gudjon Bergmann

They say 'stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage'. It was a quotation I knew as a boy. I had made it my own back then. I knew they couldn't capture my mind. Whilst I could still think, I was free. — Denis Avey

I always have strong feelings when I'm writing a book. Sometimes when I'm writing a book, I even cry when I'm writing. Once I read a quotation that I thought was very true for me, which is: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." — Eve Bunting

There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations. — Jorge Luis Borges

Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor. — H.L. Mencken

An apt quotation is like a lamp which flings its light over the whole sentence. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

It is generally supposed that where there is no QUOTATION, there will be found most originality; and as people like to lay out their money according to their notions, our writers usually furnish their pages rapidly with the productions of their own soil: they run up a quickset hedge, or plant a poplar, and get trees and hedges of this fashion much faster than the former landlords procured their timber. The greater part of our writers, in consequence, have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them; and those who never quote, in return are never quoted! — Isaac D'Israeli

Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority. — Louis Menand

The greatest tragedy for a good quotation is to be anonymous; and for the bad one, is to be known and famous! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Quotation is a noun. Quote is a verb. — Eusebius Clay

But 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. — Evelyn Waugh

Someday I'll catch that man without a quotation and he'll look undressed, the Duke said. — Anonymous

Let us see what tomorrow will bring us? Will it be joy and triumph, chaos and glory, love and growth, or victory and success? — Ana Monnar

Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay an author. — Samuel Johnson

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. — Robertson Davies

Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors ... — Thomas Browne

I was interested, M. Poirot, in something you said just now. You said that there was evil done everywhere under the sun. It was almost a quotation from Ecclesiastes." He paused and then quoted himself: "Yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live. — Agatha Christie

I caution against beginning or ending a quotation with ellipses. — Bill Walsh

The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual? — Ethel Smyth

Good teachers deserve apples; great teachers deserve chocolate. A favorite quotation, written in calligraphy on his office door. — Richard Hamming

I ... confirm the fact - with a certain bittersweet melancholy - that everything in the world brings me back to a quotation or a book. — Jorge Luis Borges

You can't be conferred with a glory you never configured your mind to come to. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your name still rings a bell when you say something good, not by causing catastrophe in a bid to sound more interesting. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Quotation lovers love rare words. — Willis Regier

Let's begin with a quotation from mindfulness expert and teacher Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It beautifully encapsulates what deceptive brain messages are, what they do to you, and how they keep you from following the path of your true self: We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those [thoughts] for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears, endlessly seeking security.16 To phrase it another way: We spend a considerable amount of our time engrossed in following deceptive brain messages until we begin to see them for what they are and value our true emotions and needs. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

When given freedom of speech, most men merely quote other men. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Well, I may not have a framed Latin diploma, but I know crazy talk when I hear it. Alcohol has been an important part of the human diet for thousands of years. The Bible is filled with references to people drinking alcohol, such as this quotation from the Book of Effusions, Chapter Eight, Verse Six, Row 7: — Dave Barry

The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own ... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism. — James Gleick

Only the "intercourse' part." Miranda makes quotation marks with her fingers. "Why do they call it intercourse anyway? It makes it sound like it's some kind of conversation. Which it isn't. It's penetration, pure and simple. There's no give-and-take involved."
"It's an act of war," Miranda objects, getting heated.
"The penis is saying, "Let me in,' and the vagina is saying, "Get the hell away from me, creep. — Candace Bushnell

The strongest language to be found in The God Delusion is tame and measured by comparison. If it sounds intemperate, it is only because of the weird convention, almost universally accepted (see the quotation from Douglas Adams here), that religious faith is uniquely privileged: above and beyond criticism. Insulting a restaurant might seem trivial compared to insulting God. But restaurateurs and chefs really exist and they have feelings to be hurt, whereas blasphemy, as the witty bumper sticker puts it, is a victimless crime. — Richard Dawkins

Or take a vacation. Everywhere in America is pretty much the same, and I don't recommend going overseas, not with the way the world regards us. It's just not safe now, safe being one of those words like free or clean or sincere that can never be said without the invisible quotation marks anymore, but still. You should get away. — Dave Mountain

People go out to look at sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own, quietly and happily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, so they quote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. Worse yet, they live as foreigners in a world of truth, and quote thoughts, and thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we? — Alison Miller

The central attitudes driving the Player are:
Women were put on this earth to have sex with men - especially me.
Women who want sex are too loose, and women who refuse sex are too uptight. (!)
It's not my fault that women find me irresistible. (This is a word-for-word quotation from a number of my clients.) It's not fair to expect me to refuse temptation when it's all around me; women seduce me sometimes, and I can't help it.
If you act like you need anything from me, I am going to ignore you. I'm in this relationship when it's convenient for me and when I feel like it.
Women who want the nonsexual aspects of themselves appreciated are bitches.
If you could meet my sexual needs, I wouldn't have to turn to other women. — Lundy Bancroft

A pawn in a very complicated game, a little cog in a huge gear, so little that it should not even be seen: in fact, it was established that I would go through here without leaving any traces; and instead, every minute I spend here I am leaving more traces. I leave traces if I do not speak with anyone, since I stick out as a man who won't open his mouth; I leave traces if I speak with someone because every word spoken is a word that remains and can crop up again later, with quotation marks or without. Perhaps this is why the author piles supposition on supposition in long paragraphs without dialogue, a thick, opaque layer of lead where I may pass unnoticed, disappear.
I am not at all the sort of person who attracts attention, I am an anonymous presence against an even more anonymous background. — Italo Calvino

Let me give you a New Year message: Believe in yourself, because no one ever achieved anything significant without believing in himself and no one ever will! Believe in yourself powerfully, especially when there is no reason left to believe in yourself because the ultimate bottom is the best place to start a big rise! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

a quotation from the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset as an epigraph for Stoner: "A hero is one who wants to be himself." In — John Williams

Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."' — William Safire

Oh, nice one, honey. Yes. Clever. That's becoming quite a familiar quotation in its own right, isn't it? Maybe I should just add it to the next edition. 'Mother was right.' Author: Mrs. Bartlett, world-renowned nag. Year: 1859. Attribution: A short play entitled Every Goddamn Weekend! — John Bartlett

The functional disenchantment, the sweet habit of each other, had begun to put lines around her mouth, lines that looked like quotation marks
as if everything she said had already been said before ... [the cat] was accustomed to much nestling and appreciation and drips from the faucet, though sometimes she would vanish outside, and they would not see her for days, only to spy her later, in the yard, dirty and matted, chomping a vole or eating old snow. — Lorrie Moore

Authors hide their big thefts by putting small ones between quotation marks. — Paul Eldridge

Perhaps the most powerful and appealing aspect of another's words, however, is simply their convenience. Whether distilled in the briefest apophthegm, or spread out across some voluminous tome, the thought is ready-made, the heavy lifting done. It's there to be used like a weapon or tool, and as time wanders on, seemingly leaving us fewer and fewer new things to say, it becomes ever more useful. As technology moves forward, as well, it also becomes much easier. Indeed, in this "information age" where so much is available to so many so quickly that enlightenment nearly verges on light pollution, it can sometimes appear that expression has been reduced to nothing more than a mad race to unearth and claim references. As such, the citation is also there to be donned, like some article of fashion from which we may reap the praise of discriminating taste without ever exerting ourself in the actual toil of manufacture. — Jasper Siegel Seneschal

A few words which he wanted to emphasize were put into brackets or set off by quotation marks. My first impulse was to point out to him that it was ridiculous to put slang words and expressions between quotation marks, for that prevents them from entering the language. But I decided not to. When I received his letters, his parentheses made me shudder. At first, it was a shudder of slight shame, disagreeable. Later (and now, when I reread them) the shudder was the same, but I know, by some indefinable, imperceptible change, that it is a shudder of love- it is both poignant and delightful, perhaps because of the memory of the word shame that accompanied it in the beginning. Those parentheses and quotation marks are the flaw on the hip, the beauty mark on the thigh whereby my friend showed that he was himself, irreplaceable, and that he was wounded. — Jean Genet

I am pitching it feebly," said young Bingo earnestly. "You haven't heard the thing. I have. Rosie shoved the cylinder on the dictating-machine last night before dinner, and it was grisly to hear the instrument croaking out those awful sentences. If that article appears I shall be kidded to death by every pal I've got. Bertie," he said, his voice sinking to a hoarse whisper, "you have about as much imagination as a warthog, but surely even you can picture to yourself what Jimmy Bowles and Tuppy Rogers, to name only tow, will say when they see me referred to in print as "half god, half prattling, mischievous child"?"
I jolly well could
"She doesn't say that?"I gasped.
"She certainly does. And when I tell you that I selected that particular quotation because it's about the only one I can stand hearing spoken, you will realise what I'm up against. — P.G. Wodehouse

What we are trying to do is to understand this confusion and not cover it up with quotations. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

When at the consecration the priest moves into the mode of first-person quotation, he is not speaking in his own person but in the person of Jesus - and that's why those words change the elements. — Robert E. Barron

Bond had taken her to the station and had kissed her once hard on the lips and had gone away. It hadn't been love, but a quotation had come into Bond's mind as his cab moved out of Pennsylvania station: 'Some love is fire, some love is rust. But the finest, cleanest love is lust. — Ian Fleming

A great many complimentary things have been said about the faculty of memory, and if you look in a good quotation book you will find them neatly arranged. — Robertson Davies

There is no way you can use the word "reality" without quotation marks around it. — Joseph Campbell

There is an old Latin quotation in regard to the poet which says 'Poeta nascitur non fit' the translation of which is - the poet is born, not made. — Joseph Devlin

If you want to be a good saddler, saddle the worst horse; for if you can tame one, you can tame all. — Socrates

I'm a discursive thinker, so quotation has played an active role in the structure and content of my books from the beginning. — Masha Tupitsyn

Mr. da Silva had a relevant quotation for everything that happened to him and in this way evaded real life. — Jeffrey Eugenides

There is no fiercer enemy than a word. A word that can be written down in pages and punctuated by quotation marks and commas and spelled out in contracts and poems and sighs, in old whispers and song lyrics, in promises and vows. — Alice Hoffman

Let us being again. To take some examples: why should "literature" still designate that which already breaks away from literature - away from what has always been conceived and signified under that name - or that which, not merely escaping literature, implacably destroys it? (Posed in these terms, the question would already be caught in the assurance of a certain fore-knowledge: can "what has always been conceived and signified under that name" be considered fundamentally homogeneous, univocal, or nonconflictual?) To take other examples: what historical and strategic function should henceforth be assigned to the quotation marks, whether visible or invisible, which transform this into a "book," or which still make the deconstruction of philosophy into a "philosophical discourse"? — Jacques Derrida

I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I. — Jeanette Winterson

I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love. — Peter James

The attribution of a speaker is in fact a part of the quotation. Some statements simply are better if a certain famous person said them. — Gary Saul Morson

Books of quotation are not only of importance to the reader for what they contain of matured thought, but also for what they suggest. Our brains receive the spark and become luminous, like inflammable material by the contact of flint and steel. — Maturin Murray Ballou

I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence. — James Boswell

Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words
"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"
words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity" and "search" and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way? — Jennifer Egan

The ancients, who in these matters were not perhaps such blockheads as some may conceive, considered poetical quotation as one of the requisite ornaments of oratory. — Isaac D'Israeli

Your vibe creates your tribe. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

SOCIETY AS COMPULSIVE AND ADDICTED Our society is highly addictive. We have sixty million sexual abuse victims. Possibly seventy-five million lives are seriously affected by alcoholism, with no telling how many more through other drugs. We have no idea of the actual impact on our economy of the billions of tax-free dollars that come from the illegal drug trade. Over fifteen million families are violent. Some 60 percent of women and 50 percent of men have eating disorders. We have no actual data on work addiction or sexual addictions. I saw a recent quotation that cited thirteen million gambling addicts. If toxic shame is the fuel of addiction, we have a massive problem of shame in our society. — John Bradshaw

Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard. — Robertson Davies

But, however, I clapped a stopper over his capers.' Dr Maturin was proud of his nautical expressions: sometimes he got them right, but right or wrong he always brought them out with a slight emphasis of satisfaction, much as others might utter a particularly apt Greek or Latin quotation. 'And brought him up with a round stern,' he added. — Patrick O'Brian

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought. — Dorothy L. Sayers

When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly - with body language.
Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow.
In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear the way you want to be heard. — Russell Baker

The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall. — Susan Sontag

I was the type who looked at discussions of What Is Truth only with a view toward correcting the manuscript. If you were to quote "I am that I am," for example, I thought that the fundamental problem was where to put the comma, inside the quotation marks or outside. — Umberto Eco

You can always find an evolutionary quotation for anything. But the question is whether it's functional, which is not the same as being evolutionary. — Daniel Kahneman

I should count myself most fortunate ... " Swann was beginning, a trifle pompously, when the Doctor broke in derisively. Having once heard it said, and never having forgotten that in general conversation emphasis and the use of formal expressions were out of date, whenever he heard a solemn word used seriously, as the word 'fortunate' had been used just now by Swann, he at once assumed that the speaker was being deliberately pedantic. And if, moreover, the same word happened to occur, also, in what he called an old 'tag' or 'saw,' however common it might still be in current usage, the Doctor jumped to the conclusion that the whole thing was a joke, and interrupted with the remaining words of the quotation, which he seemed to charge the speaker with having intended to introduce at that point, although in reality it had never entered his mind.
"Most fortunate for France!" he recited wickedly, shooting up both arms with great vigour. — Marcel Proust