James Boswell Quotes

The greater part of our writers have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them: and those who never quote in return are seldom quoted.

Inevitably, almost everything we say is either quotation or paraphrase.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world.

Humans are humans because we are able to communicate with each other and to organize to do things together that we can't do individually.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it..

If it's one thing we learned from the first book, it's that you don't have to be a prizefighter, or a world-renowned architect, or a concert violinist to have been affected by the power of words.

Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence

Every man is a borrower and a mimic, life is theatrical and literature a quotation.

It is generally supposed that where there is no QUOTATION, there will be found most originality; and as people like to lay out their money according to their notions, our writers usually furnish their pages rapidly with the productions of their own soil: they run up a quickset hedge, or plant a poplar, and get trees and hedges of this fashion much faster than the former landlords procured their timber. The greater part of our writers, in consequence, have become so original, that no one cares to imitate them; and those who never quote, in return are never quoted!

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.

It was a profound saying of Wilhelm Humboldt, that 'Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already man.'

Speech ... is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking.

Words are where most change begins.

Example has far more followers than reason.

I am now to offer some thoughts upon that sameness or familiarity which we frequently find between passages in different authors without quotation. This may be one of three things either what is called Plagiarism, or Imitation, or Coincidence.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

My grandmother was an English teacher for a while. And she stressed to me the importance of reading, being able to articulate well.

Get what you can with words, because words are free, but the words of an armed man ring that much sweeter.

An Oxe is taken by the horns, and a Man by the tongue.

Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.

Our words set the direction for our lives.

In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his

Everybody exaggerates a little bit.