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

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