Noun

quotation (plural quotations)

1. A fragment of a human expression that is being referred to by somebody else. Most often a quotation is taken from literature, but also sentences from a speech, scenes from a movie, elements of a painting, etc. may be quoted.

   "Where they burn books, they will also burn people" is a famous quotation from Heinrich Heine.

2. The act of naming a price; the price that has been quoted.

Synonyms

• quote
• citation

Derived terms

• quotation mark

Related terms

• attestation

A quotation is the repetition of one expression as part of another one, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed (as by citation) to its original source, and it is indicated by (punctuated with) quotation marks.

A quotation can also refer to the repeated use of units of any other form of expression, especially parts of artistic works: elements of a painting, scenes from a movie or sections from a musical composition.

The rest of this article addresses only written or oral quotations.

Reasons for using quotations

Quotations are used for a variety of reasons: to illuminate the meaning or to support the arguments of the work in which it is being quoted, to provide direct information about the work being quoted (whether in order to discuss it, positively or negatively, to pay homage to the original work or author, to make the user of the quotation seem well-read), and/or to comply with copyright law. Quotations are also commonly printed as a means of inspiration and to invoke philosophical thoughts from the reader.

This page is for quotations about quotations and quoting.

Contents

• 1 Sourced
  • 1.1 On Misquotation
• 2 See also
• 3 External links

Sourced

• It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
  • Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson (1911)

• The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands.
  • Robert Benchley, in "Quick Quotations" in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

• Life itself is a quotation.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, quoted in Cool Memories (1987) by Jean Baudrillard, (trans. 1990) Ch. 5

• At all events, the next best thing to being witty one's self, is to be able to quote another's wit.
  • Christopher N. Bovee, Thoughts, Feelings, and Fancies (1857)

• Quotations can be valuable, like raisins in the rice pudding, for adding iron as well as eye appeal.
  • Peg Bracken, I Didn't Come Here to Argue

• The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.
  • Elias Canetti, The Human Province (1942–1972)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Tue Jul 27 22:16:25 2010