Quotes on quotations
But I have long thought that if you knew a column of advertisements by heart, you could achieve unexpected felicities with them. You can get a happy quotation anywhere if you have the eye.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks, and those to whom they are addressed should be big and tall of stature.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Bohr, Niels
The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen.
Snicket, Lemony
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
de Cervantes, Miguel
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a witty person, but a pebble in the hands of a fool.
Unknown, Author
Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find.
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.
Ellis, Havelock
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
Maugham, W. Somerset
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Montaigne, Michel de
Quotation, n.: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.
Bierce, Ambrose
Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.
Huxley, Aldous
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.
Canetti, Elias
People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.
Comins, David H.
I have laboriously collected this cento out of diverse writers. I have wronged no authors but given every man his own. Bees do little harm and damage no one in extracting honey; I can say of myself, whom have I injured? The matter is theirs most part, and yet mine. It becomes something different in its new setting.
Burton, Robert
It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
Jones, Franklin P.
All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who can condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character, or illustrates an existence.
Disraeli, Benjamin
Classical quotation is a parole of literary men all over the world.
Johnson, Samuel
Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind.
Alger, William
In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
Eliot, George
In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.
Waugh, Evelyn