Four-letter Word - Quotation

Quotation

Good authors too who once knew better words,
Now only use four-letter words.
Writing prose,
Anything goes.

— Cole Porter, "Anything Goes"

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Famous quotes containing the word quotation:

    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 (1903–1966)

    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 (1858–1944)

    We are as much informed of a writer’s genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, and find a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, “the italics are ours.”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)