Quotes are the distilled wisdom of those who came before us. In a few perceptive and well thought out words, a great quote can express more about the nature of humanity than a hundred essays on the topic. For the writer then, quotes are exceptionally useful both to help illustrate a point and to motivate the self when writing gets hard.
Quote Resources
Last week we looked at some of the more practical tools that can help anyone engaged in writing – specifically dictionaries and thesauruses online and where to get them. If those form the basic scaffolding of your writing, quotes provide some of the flare.
Like dictionaries and thesauruses, there are a whole range of useful resources online that any writer can use to find quotes to help illustrate their piece of writing. Whether you’re looking for inspiration or support in making your case in a report, the following sites will provide not just great quotes, but perhaps wisdom you can apply to the challenges of your own life and the motivation to push past the barriers that all writers must struggle against.
Quotation Resources
Quotes4All.net
A clean and relatively simple quotation resource, quotes4all.net allows the visitor to search for quotes either alphabetically by author or subject or via its own search interface. If you don’t even know what you’re doing, a random quotes button will present you with a selection of randomly chosen quotes for your consideration.
Quote Garden
Online since 1998, Quote Garden boasts an impressive collection of quotations and attributions for word lovers of all ages. Quotes are arranged collectively by topic, and while the site does appear to be more focused towards American usage, there’s plenty of material there for writers from all across the world.
World of Quotes
A comprehensive archive of quotations that also expands into proverbs and sayings from around the world that are not generally attributable to anything beyond their originating culture. The site is searchable and especially notable for its inclusion of a “This Day in History” feature that lists everything that happened on a particular day in history – useful if you need something to write about.
For example, on today October 21st Admiral Nelson defeated the French Fleet, after exhorting his sailors that “England expects every man will do his duty” – a quotation that has ever since been associated with the Admiral.
Brainy Quote
A quote sight for quote lovers, Brainy Quote offers a huge archive of quotations from its site with numerous web options across various plugins and website resources allowing those with blogs and websites to benefit from quotes of the day direct to their own websites.
The site itself is searchable either via a customer search or specifically via topic or author if you have some idea of what you are looking for. It also boasts a collection of quote based images similar to the motivational images posters you might have seen elsewhere.
Have an Ideal Quotation Resource? Please share it in the comments below!
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