Focus on Education
Quotations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- This article is about quoting. For information about the punctuation
mark, see Quotation mark
A quotation is a fragment of a human expression that is
being referred to by somebody else. Most often a quotation is taken from literature,
but also sentences from a speech, dialogue from a movie and lines from
song lyrics are
also used. Aside from simply using words a quotation can also refer to any use
of a piece of an artistic work in another place. This can include elements of a
painting,
scene from a movie
and sections from a musical
composition.
A typical, and perhaps ideal, quotation is usually short and commonly only
one sentence long. There a two broad categories which most quotations fall into,
beauty and truth although some quotations fit equally well into both these
groups. Beautiful quotes are words remembered for their aesthetically pleasing
use of language whereas many other quotes are remembered because they are
thought to express some universal
truth. These latter quotes are often called maxims or aphorisms and they are highly
regarded for being pithy renderings of ideas that most people have but they have
not been able to sum-up so well. A third type of quotation may be any line which
merely reminds the person who quote it of a particularly memorable work.
|
|
Beauty:
- "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
- Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; "
- Ode To Autumn, John Keats
Truth:
- "Authority is never without hate."
- Ion, Euripides
Memorable:
- "Abandon all hope, whoever enters here."
- Inferno III, 9, Dante Alighieri -
Inscribed above the gates of Hell
Quotation is used for a variety of reasons; to pay homage to the original
work or author,
to illuminate the meaning of the work it is being quoted in, to make the user of
the quote seem well-read and even to ridicule the original author. Proverbs are anonymous
quotes that have survived in oral form. They are usually an important part of a
country's culture and are often significantly older then much of that country's
other literature.
The art of quotation is fraught with difficulties. If the source of a
quotation is not given it can lead readers to think that the author using the
quotation originated the thought or that they are being dishonest. Some people
are thought to have said certain things but there is no evidence of theses words
in any of their surviving writings, when this is the case the words have to
merely be attributed to them. Too much quotation can lead a reader to think the
author does not have any original ideas. Many quotations are routinely incorrect
or attributed to the wrong authors. Quotations from obscure writers are often
attributed to far more famous writers by lax quoters. Good examples of this are
Winston Churchill who
gets many political quotes of uncertain origin given to him and Oscar
Wilde who has said far more witty things then he has ever had the time
for.
- "If, with the literate, I am
- Impelled to try an epigram,
- I never seek to take the credit;
- We all assume that Oscar said it."
- Dorothy Parker
Deliberate misquotation is very common either through the fact that a
misquotation is much better known then the original or simply because the misquotation fits the
situation better. Possibly worse then misquotation is inappropriate where an
author's words are taken out of context and are used to support a position or
idea that they would have never agreed with. In case of extensive quoting from a
work one needs to consider copyright. Famous quotations
are frequently collected in books either for reference of the correct quote and
author or to entertain and inspire the readers. To this end daily quotations are
often included in diaries and on calendars.
A sister project of Wikimedia Foundation called Wikiquote was created on June
27, 2003 as a free online encyclopedia of quotations in every language. Sententiae
is another free and open source project based on user-edited quotations in all
languages.
There are many other quotation sites on the World Wide Web. Sadly,
very few of them seem to care for accurate information and correct citation.
- "I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."
- Journals, Ralph Waldo
Emerson
- "I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."
- George Bernard
Shaw, attributed
Quotation, n:The act of repeating erroneously the words of
another."
Ambrose Bierce
External links
- Famous Quotations.com (http://www.famous-quotations.com:):A huge
collection of quotations
- Top 50
(http://www.topsitelists.com/bestsites/amitkoth/topsites.html)
Top 50 Quality Quotations Resources
- Quotes from Famous People
(http://www.quotesfromfamouspeople.com/)
- Sententiae (http://www.sententiae.org/):multilingual
open source database of quotations, aphorisms and sayings (also a wiki)
- Your Quotations (http://www.yourquotations.net):Thousands of
famous quotes categorized and searcheable.
- Bartleby (http://www.bartleby.com) - Online Literature
resource with thousands of accurate quotations.
- QuotesandSayings (http://www.quotesandsayings.com) -
QuotesandSayings.com - one of the first quotations websites with subject and
author indexes.
- Search Portal
(http://www.quotesandsayings.com/finquoteframes.htm)
- A portal to search all the good quotations databases, in one place.
- LitQuotes (http://www.litquotes.com/) - LitQuotes
features over 1,000 quotes from literature. There is a quote of the day as
well as a searchable database of quotations.
- quoteworld.org (http://www.quoteworld.org/)
- Famous Quotes (http://home.att.net/~quotations/)
- Quotes World (http://www.quotes-world.com/)
- Quotations about the media
(http://www.terramedia.co.uk/quotations/)
- Send quotations in an ecard (http://www.quotationsecards.com)
|
