Quotations on The Web
by Graham Brown
Contents
Quotation remarks
It was the days of Word Version 1 , and I decided to take a typing for beginners course. To practice between lessons I started rattling out famous quotations into Word. Then I got hold of a compuserve account and a 9k (yes 9, remember those!?) modem! My Word document went to over 500 pages before I realised that the web was bigger and quicker to search than my document ...
Quotations Page dot com
www.quotationspage.com is a great place to start. They have over 21,000 quotations and more are added daily. They also have lots of interesting sections. Word of the Day is a bit dry, but can be interesting as they give a history of the word, Quotes of the Day are fun and a good page to bookmark. They also have a lot of excellent articles with "spotlights on quotable authors or topics, or anything we have to say that's longer than a paragraph or two"
There is lots more quotations related stuff and the cool blues are very restful on the eye. The search page lets you choose any or all of their collections you wish to search, these are:- MM's Cynical Quotes, LM's Motivational Quotes, Classic Quotes, Cole's Quotables, Rand Lindsly's Quotes, Poor Man's College, Internet Collections, The Devil's Dictionary, and Contributed Quotations.
The Devil's Dictionary
The Devil's Dictionary is the best known book of Ambrose Bierce. There is a full version of his book with search facilities at the excellent online-literature site. If you are looking for a very cynical but sometimes quite funny quote then this is the place to look.
TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
The site also has a searchable version of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 8000+ Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources.
Meta Quotes
The excellent Material Facts Quotes is a kind of meta-quote site. On the home page you can type searches direct for all sorts of quote collections, including Bartletts, The Internet Movie Database, Quote Gallery, and the Giga Quotes which has over 23,000 quotations. The site itself also has some huge collections of quotes by Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and many more.
Quality v's Quantity
Not all sites have thousands of quotes on them. Browsing around I found these Good Quotes from Famous People by Dr Gabriel Robins which has some superb quotations on it. There are "only" 800 but the quality is high!
"This book fills a much-needed gap." - Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review, and by the same guy, "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
Wikepedia of course
The brilliant Wikipedia has an excellent quotations section. There are quotations in every language, including sources and translations of non-English quotes. There are also links to Wikipedia for more information. They also have an interesting proverbs section that lists proverbs, Danish, Turkish, Punjabi, Scottish, they even have Pirate Proverbs! Again these are translated into English. These vary from wize, to fun, to just plain puzzling, "A leader is judged not by the length of his reign but by the decisions he makes." Kahless (quoted), Deep Space Nine. Did I say that?
Another section on Wikipedia deals with Misquotations. For example "Pride goeth before a fall" should be "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" - Bible (King James Version), Proverbs 16:18. Then they go on to tell you what "Beam me up, Scotty", "Elementary, my dear Watson", "Play it again, Sam" etc etc really started off as!
quotationreference.com Quote Garden Science Quotes |
http://creativequotations.com Quotations Book The Funny Quotes Archives |
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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