The most obvious attraction of quotation is that it gives you a little vacation from writing—the other person is doing the work. All you have to do is type. But there is a reason beyond sloth for my liking of quotation at length. It permits you to show the thing itself rather than the pale, and never quite right, simulacrum that paraphrase is.

— Janet Malcolm

 

Guess who messed up her BEDA schedule already?

No matter, as the above suggests, this post will allow some quotable authors do the hard work for me.

Without further ado, here are some of my favourite clever and inspiring quotations.

 

Wit & Wisdom

Enjoy what you can, and endure what you must.
— Goethe

 

Good friends, good books & a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
— Mark Twain

 

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
— Voltaire

 

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.
— Oscar Wilde

 

A day without laughter is a day wasted.
— Charlie Chaplin

 

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
— John Steinbeck

 

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
— Oscar Wilde

 

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

 
 

Inspiration

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
— Benjamin Franklin

 

The two most beautiful words in the English language are “Check enclosed.”
— Dorothy Parker

 

The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
— Albert Einstein

 

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
— Henry Ford

 

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
— Carl Sagan

 
 
Share your favourite quotes with me in the comments!