Quotes About Quotation

It is an old error of man to forget to put quotation marks where he borrows from a woman's brain

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.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

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.

Most collectors collect tangibles. As a quotation collector, I collect wisdom, life, invisible beauty, souls alive in ink.

You will find professed quotations from authors, of the correctness of which you will not be satisfied; and how important is it to be able to satisfy yourself by examining the originals!

When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.

[T]he governess... looked upon him [Mr. Swiveller] as a literary gentleman of eccentric habits, and of a most prodigious talent in quotation.

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

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?

Most collectors collect tangibles. As a quotation collector, I collect wisdom, life, invisible beauty, souls alive in ink.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight which a verse gives in happy quotation than in the poem.

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.

Quotation, like much better things, has its abuses. One may quote till one compiles.... Such do not always understand the authors whose names adorn their barren pages, taken, too, from the third or the thirtieth hand. Those who trust to such false quoters will often learn how contrary this transmission is to the sense and application of the original. Every transplantation has altered the fruit of the tree; every new channel, the quality of the stream in its remove from the spring-head.

Whenever the mind of a writer is saturated with the full inspiration of a great author, a quotation gives completeness to the whole; it seals his feelings with undisputed authority. Or whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonise.

I doubt whether Cromwell or Milton could have rivaled [William Lloyd] Garrison in this field of quotation; and the power of quotation is as dreadful a weapon as any which the human intellect can forge.

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.

I mention this only to shew that the citations of the most judicious authors frequently deceive us, and consequently that prudence obliges us to examine quotations, by whomsoever alleged.

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.

NONSENSE! Everyone loves a Humbug," shouted the Humbug. "As I was saying to the king just the other day——

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

Everyone quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand.

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his convictions.

I must confess I did not always relish his misquotations, which sometimes made absolute nonsense of the passages; but what author stands upon trifles when he is praised?