Quotes About Quotations

Each day he made attempts … but produced nothing but quotations, thinly or well disguised, of his own work. Nothing sprang free of its own idiom, its own authority, to offer the element of surprise that would be the guarantee of originality.

The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers... but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.

The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant.

It was a typical Soviet ploy. People were forever quoting Lenin, much of the time with a great deal of creativity, knowing that even scholars had a difficult time identifying quotations from the mass of Lenin's writing and speeches. Rostnikov

The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator which is often socially impressive.

The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator which is often socially impressive.

To be amused by what you read--that is the great spring of happy quotations.

I never have found the perfect quote. At best I have been able to find a string of quotations which merely circle the ineffable idea I seek to express.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

And in spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

Note that scholars are judged mostly on how many times their work is referenced in other people's work and thus cliques are formed of people who quote one another. It's an I quote you, you quote me type of business.

Sure, I've often been misrepresented - anyone frequently quoted has this experience.

In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books.

And this? Aldhelm of Malmesbury. Listen to this page: 'Primitus pantorum procerum poematorum pio potissimum paternoque presertim privilegio panegiricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo promulgatas.' ... The words all begin with the same letter! The men of my islands are all a bit mad, William said proudly.

Thank you for your anonymous, enthusiastic posting of my quotes, but one of them is taken from Einstein, another from IB Singer and a third from Shakespeare. Let's return what's rightfully theirs as I feel their brands could use the signal boost.

[A]utumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She occupied her mind as much as possible in such like musings and quotations...

The reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be quoted to prove its barbarism.

To me, novels are just quotations with a bunch of filler.

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!

There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.

Quotations will tell the full measure of meaning, if you have enough of them.

To me, novels are just quotations with a bunch of filler.