Sensational
Quotes for Smart People
So what do you say to someone who has just managed to
place a horseshoe on your nose? How about a sensational quotation from some famous or not-so- famous person! For
example, you could use "Better to be despised than
forgotten", which you may find on one of
the webpages on this website.
Indeed, quotations are a great source of wisdom and can be useful in many
situations.
"It is a good thing for an educated man," declared
Winston Churchill, "to read books of quotations." Anatole France advised, "When a thing has been said and said
well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it." Not to be outdone, George Bernard Shaw once remarked, "I often
quote myself. It adds spice to my conversations."
Insofar as being quoted by others, here is a webpage that I
recently discovered, which features quotations by yours truly. I didn't know that I said all of these things
— or at least I forgot that I said some of them! The webpage is called Top 25 Quotes by Ernie Zelinski (of
119).
No doubt few things spice up an article, an e-book, a retirement letter, a
conversation, or a speech more than a well-chosen quotation.
Organized into many categories for easy and quick reference, this is the
ultimate website of sensational quotes for the professional speaker, journalist, author, teacher, preacher,
financial advisor, banker, executive, and connoisseur of great quotes. It also makes great reading for just about
everyone.
Sensational Quotes for Smart People has it all: Absurdity. Ridicule.
Irony. Twisted humor. Sarcasm. Satire. Paradox. Exaggeration. Nonsense. Frivilovity. Comedy. Mockery. Social
commentary. Even wisdom and valuable insight.
These unconventional quotations are a source of advice, knowledge, and wisdom
on a variety of subjects including food, work, retirement (some borrowed from
The Retirement Quotes Cafe website) ,
success, dating, love, life, marriage, and
creativity by famous
people such as Mark Twain and
Oscar
Wilde. If you are in the market for cheerful insight, you have
come to the right place.
Most of these quotations represent the amiable wisdom of the ages from
artists, authors,
business people, scientists,
actors, sports figures, and politicians.
Indeed, these quotations represent some of the most brilliant thoughts of
all time.
All told, these sensational quotes should add spice to your conversations,
remind you humorously of your questionable existence, motivate you to greater accomplishments, or just plainly
lighten your day.
First Top-10 List of
Sensational
Quotes and Sayings about
Quotations
#1 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
Life itself is a quotation.
- Jorge Luis Borges
#2 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
I shall never be ashamed to quote a bad author if what he says is
good.
- Seneca the Younger
#3 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.
- Samuel Johnson
#4 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
I love quotations because it is a joy to
find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than
oneself.
- Marlene Dietrich
#5 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
I quote others only the better to express myself.
- Michel de Montaigne
#6 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
The ability to quote is a serviceable
substitute for wit.
- W. Somerset Maugham
#7 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
Books of quotations are an elemental model of how culture is perpetuated, the wisdom of the
trite passed on to posterity, to be added to, edited, and modified by subsequent generations.
- Robert Andrews
#8 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original
thinking.
- Dorothy Sayers
#9 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
One good quote is worth a book.
- Unknown wise person
#10 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
Quotations help us remember the
simple yet profound truths that give life perspective and meaning. When it comes to life's most important
lessons, we can all use gentle reminders.
- Chriswell Freeman
Second Top-10 List of
Sensational
Quotes and Sayings about
Quotations
#1 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
The next best thing to being
clever is being able to quote someone who is.
- Mary Pettibone Poole
#2 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.
- Samuel Johnson
#3 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. . . . The quotations,
when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and
look for more.
- Sir Winston Churchill
#4 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
There is a misleading, unwritten rule that states if a quote giving advice
comes from someone famous, very old, or Greek, then it must be good advice.
- Bo Bennett
#5 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the
book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and
west.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
#6 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
- A. Bronson Alcott
#7 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
Quotation . . . A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they
give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he
expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned
and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects
it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled,
pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.
- Henry W. Fowler
#8 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of
thinking for oneself.
- A. A. Milne
#9 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be
preserved by quotation.
- Isaac D'Israeli
#10 of Top Ten Sensational Quotes about
Quotations
To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
- Alexander Smith, Scottish poet, in Dreamthorp
More
Sensational Quotes
about
Quotations for Smart
People
It is my belief that nearly any
invented quotation , played with confidence, stands a good chance to
deceive. - Mark Twain
Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is
the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.
- Janet Malcolm
You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected
passages from the best writers in the world.
- G. K. Chesterton
There are two kinds of marriages - where the husband quotes
the wife, or where the wife quotes the husband.
- Clifford Odets
Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
- Edward Young
I know heaps of quotations, so I can always make quite a fair
show of knowledge.
- O. Douglas
That's the nice thing about this job. You get to quote yourself shamelessly. If you don't,
Larry Speakes will.
- Ronald Reagan, U.S. Republican President, to Daily Telegraph, April 1988
Quotation: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
The words erroneously repeated.
- Ambrose Bierce
The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behoves
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?
- Dame Ethel Smyth
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each
other very well.
- Elias Canetti
Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled
by a quotation.
- Emile Cioran
If you don’t quote yourself, who will?
- Scott Ginsberg
The best ideas are common property.
- Seneca the Younger
Nobody quotes me, so why should I quote someone else?
- Unknown wise person
No comment, but don't quote me.
- Unknown wise person
Next to being witty, the best thing is being able to quote another's
wit.
- Christopher N. Bovee
One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.
- Diogenes
When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it
and copy it.
- Anatole France
Stronger than an army is a quotation whose time has come.
- W.I.E. Gates
Stop quoting me!
- Jimmy Henderson
What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
- Robert Holmes
Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.
- Groucho Marx
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a
pebble in the hand of a fool.
- Joseph Roux
The wise make proverbs and fools repeat them.
- Isaac D'Israeli
It is little service to the reader to print windy, dozen-page letters of no high quality when a few
quoted phrases and a sentence of summary would have conveyed the nature of most of them.
- John Skow
No comment, but that's off the record. So don't quote me on
this!
- Ernie Zelinski, to a street reporter wanting an opinion about an upcoming municipal
election.
When you see yourself quoted in print and you're sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a
misquotation.
- Laurence J. Peter
Most anthologists ... of quotations are like those who eat cherries . first picking the best ones and
winding up by eating every thing.
- Nicolas Chamfort
When someone has the wit to coin a useful phrase, it ought to be acclaimed
and broadcast or it will perish.
- Jack Smith
I think we must . . . quote whenever we feel that the allusion is interesting or helpful or
amusing.
- Clifton Fadiman
A witty saying proves nothing.
- Voltaire
Quoting is the thinking of fools.
- Unknown wise person
The difference between my quotations and those of the next man is that I
leave out the inverted commas.
- George Moore
To say that anything was a quotation was an excellent method, in Eleanor's eyes, for withdrawing it from
discussion.
- H. H. Munro ( "Saki" )
Many excelled me: I know it./Yet I am quoted as much as they.
- Ovid, his epitaph
Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully, and quote aptly.
- Lancelot Hogben
I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which
have been thought so.
- Walter Savage Landor
Shake was a dramatist of note;/He lived by writing things to quote.
- H. C. Bunner
Learning is often spoken of as if we were watching the open pages of all the books which we have ever
read, and then, when occasion arises, we select the right page to read aloud to the universe.
-Alfred North Whitehead
Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow" -
I'm sorry, now, I wrote it!
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'll kill you if you quote it.
- Gelett Burgess, U.S. humorist, illustrator. Cinq Ans Après.
He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of
Emperors.
- Rudyard Kipling
Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's
opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your
own satisfaction, but not name them.
- John Selden
It isn't much of a book of
quotations if I'm not in it.
- Ernie J. Zelinski (after
being given a book of quotations for his birthday)
In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the
classics, now it's lyric verse.
- Evelyn Waugh
Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the
learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too
widely.
- Hesketh Pearson
One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats- and one
always secretes too much jelly.
- Virginia Woolf
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
- Tom Stoppard
Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller
of his conviction.
- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), German critic and philosopher.
Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear.
- Ihab Hassan
Quotations are a columnist's bullpen. Stealing someone else's
words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own.
- Peter Anderson
Quotations - always inexact. I don't trust people who cannot even copy out.
- Jean Rostand, French biologist, writer. Carnets d'un Biologiste
To each reader those quotations are agreeable that neither strike him as hackneyed nor
rebuke his ignorance.
-H. W. Fowler
The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a
Surrealist taste.
- Susan Sontag
A book that furnishes no quotations is, me judice, no book -
it is a plaything.
- Thomas Love Peacock
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
- Samuel Johnson (1709-84), English author, lexicographer
Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.
- Guy Debord
Hush, little bright line, don't you cry,/You'll be a cliche
by and by.
- Fred Allen
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
- Robert Benchley
A good conversationalist is not one who remembers what was said, but says what someone
wants to remember.
-John Mason Brown
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are per
petuated by quotations.
- Benjamin Disraeli
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
- James Baldwin
No comment.
- Doug Moe, upon hearing that he had been voted the most quotable coach in the NBA
Quotes from Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara . . . are as germane to our highly technological,
computerized society as a stagecoach on a jet runway at Kennedy airport.
- Saul Alinsky (1909-72), U.S. radical activist. Rules for Radicals.
Anyone looking for daily quotes, free quotes, inspirational sayings, famous sayings, famous
quotations, or a quote of the day and who spells quotes as either "qotes" or "quates" does not deserve to
read anybody's quotes or sayings.
- Dave Erhard
Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.
- Jonathan Swift
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 Canadian novelist, journalist, Dangerous Jewels, in Toronto Daily Star
Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism - victimless
collecting, as it were . . . in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector
becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the
traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector
may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.
- Susan Sontag, U.S. essayist, On Photography
We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority . . . though we quote sometimes to display
our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our
scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our "white mythology." Other authors we constantly invoke,
chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.
- Ihab Hassan
WEBSITE COPYRIGHT © 2022
by Ernie J. Zelinski
Author of The World's Best
Retirement Book
|