Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Flattery works like a drug.
Flatter yourself critically.
Quotations calcify into clichés.
Cunning authors cut to be quoted.
Quotation lovers love rare words.
Quotations cause all kinds of trouble.
[D]ifferent people have different quotational gravity.
In phrases as brief as a breath worldly wisdom concentrates.
Flattery.... gets its kicks by flirting with insult and ridicule.
Care for yourself enough to listen carefully to what you say to yourself.
Like pollen on a honeybee, flattery clings to the things you tell yourself.
Quotologists encounter happy surprises, bright books by faded authors, treasures hidden under dust.
Quotology disdains no quotations whatsoever, a duty it bears stoutly, with bloodshot eyes and sagging shelves.
If you flatter yourself properly you will be better able to enjoy yourself. Stretch your joy so that others enjoy you too.
A little flattery, like a warm bath and soft towel, will let you get along with yourself, lie down with yourself, and sleep.
Misquotation is quotology’s swamp. Amateur quoters mix and mangle Shakespeare and Scripture. Professors gaffe and printers bungle. It’s a mess we must wade into.
At its best, flattery is truth well dressed, and it is best dressed with fine see-through fabrics. Honest flattery can caress a lover, cover up a gaffe, and muffle aggression.
Great quotation collections glean the millennia, distill essences, and battle for bragging rights about who’s bigger, who’s smarter, who’s best. Who-knows-who-said-what has a market, a history, and a hall of fame.
Say what you want without saying it yourself: quote. Very useful, this, sometimes lovely, and versatile, too: big thoughts in small pieces, neatly wrapped and bundled in bulk, in different flavors for different tastes.
Ralph Keyes calls quotation collectors "quotographers," the men and women who gather catchwords, watchwords, war words, winged words, maxims, mottos, sayings, and quips into books of a thousand pages. Through the centuries quotation collectors have saved quotations that would otherwise be lost.
Excellent flatterers welcome attentive audiences; mighty potentates enjoy public praise. In the most pleasing situation, a flatterer would genuinely admire the flatteree, please that person, please other present company, be pleased to stagger rivals, and get something out of it: applause, promotion, a favor, reciprocal praise. Flattery is as social as a banquet.
Maria Edgeworth grumbled against vandals who ruined immortal works by quoting the life out of them. "How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets." Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, scissored, patched, and frayed.