Sources for good quotations and for researching questionable quotes.
See also: Accuracy, Attribution, and Citations.
Libraries Within Libraries is a portable, placeless archive representing the research practice of Canadian artist Meaghen Buckley. Originating in a four-month artist residency in a library in 2012, it has evolved to serve ongoing needs.
"... references I found useful while developing my own ideas about language and art, and are offered here along with a few notes on them."
These sources value accuracy, attribution, and citations.
Comprises over 18,000 entries that reveal the etymologies, trace the origins and otherwise catalog "words with a tale to tell."
Extensive collection of quotations by scientists (and some non-scientists) about science. You can search or browse by name or topic. Good citations.
Includes Top 100, Greatest Opening and Last Lines, Best Film Speeches and Monologues, Funnies, Taglines, and more.
Internet Movie Database Search Text of Quotes (IMDb).
Search full text of quotes in movies here, or go directly to the "Quotes" page of a specific movie.
Many quotes. Classic Authors. "values quality and accuracy."
The site says its mission is to educate and inform and spread the importance of quoting with proper attribution. "Many of our verified quotations include informative footnotes and possible variant translations. You can also find plenty of useful information about authors, such as biography, links to their works in the public domain, and which other authors they are related to."
120,000 most authoratative quotations from a dozen published (mostly early 20th century) collections of quotations including Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (10th ed.).
Just a few (Lincoln, Einstein, Monroe), but nicely done.
A blog that investigates the truth about quotations. Who really said what?
The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page Frank Lynch. "an amateur scholar"
Collected quotes from a "science hobbyist"
The tenth edition of 1919 contains over 11,000 searchable quotations.
"...lists phrases to say in times of trouble in a number of categories." Since 1996.
quotes from famous people. 4481 quotes, 1308 authors, 414 books. Nice presentation for browsing. Citations.
Quotations of Jorges Luis Borges. "I cannot combine certain letters, as dhcmrlchtdj, which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible meaning." The Library of Babel (1941).
A search engine for other quotation sites. Attempts to collect the largest sources of quotations and related items (proverbs, sayings, maxims, amorphisms, slogans, clichés, etc.). Many of the websites included here also include things such as full text of speeches, author biographies, and quotes of the day.
Readers post their favorite quotations from books they like. Best when you find a page of quotes for a particular book. There are a fair number of misattributed, unsourced quotes here, too, unfortunately.
Quotes indexed by person and topic. "The #1 resource for Jazz quotes, featuring famous quotes about Jazz from every great Jazz artist. Updated regularly with new quotes!"
from the Library Juice blog.
Includes: Animals/Creatures, Consumerism/Overconsumption, Energy/Alternatives, Forests, Future, General Environmental Quotes, Global Warming, Land, Pollution, Plants, Recycling/Landfills, Sky, Stewardship, Sustainability, Water.
about 20Mb. of text, as of 22nd January 2000.
Mr. Szasz is a professor of history at the University of New Mexico.
"The oldest quotation site on the Web, established 1994." Over 28,000 quotations from over 3,100 authors, more added daily.
"Cat-v.org hosts a series of sites [including "Encyclopedia of things considered harmful"] dedicated to diverse subjects that share an idiosyncratic intellectual perspective, questioning orthodoxy and fomenting elitism and high standards in topics from software design to politics, passing by art and journalism and anything else interesting. Other than total and complete world domination, the overriding goal is to encourage and stimulate critical and independent thinking."
Mostly short quotes. all on one page.
This unique volume is devoted exclusively to English language proverbs that originated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Over 13,000 quotes and proverbs from Yale University Press’s award-winning title The Yale Book of Quotations and the companion edition, The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs.
Literary misquotations quiz: can you get the wrong lines right? by Alison Flood, The Guardian (19 July 2017).
There are also a few that are much more extensive.
This page consists of things that many people think are correct quotations but are actually incorrect.
Many of the original quotes are accompanied by audio clips. "Some of the most classic film lines or scenes are really only legendary and/or apocryphal."
A book of misquotations by Elizabeth Knowles.
[Print book] Oxford University Press, 2006.
Here are some useful sources for tracking down a quotation's attribution and source and accuracy.
When you want to search the text of a specific book. Many of the books in the Amazon bookstore are full-text searchable. You may be able to see a snippet or even a page view -- or not.
Search the full text of of books provided by publishers and the many books digitized from some of the great libraries of the world. You may or may not be able to see it in context.
Literature, reference, verse, The Bible.
Check the "Full-text" tab to search the full-text of over 7 million books digitized from great libraries.
Check the "Text contents" box before searching. Seach more than 15 million "texts" or search just books digitized from American or Canadian Libraries.
Includes the 1864 Globe Edition of the complete works with excellent search by keyword, phrase, character, etc.