Quotes Online (October 11th, 2003)

Reuters | Technology: Livewire: Recycling Word Power - from Aristotle to Zapata

This is a great article which briefly mentions the power of quotations, and how the internet has made them more available for many people. Sometimes one can't find the right words, or sometimes one wants some 'backing' for one's own thoughts.

The article mentions Bartleby.com, QuotationsPage.com, QuotationReference.com and QuoteLand.com - places which I do use from time, but I try to avoid overusing.

After all, if we continue using the pre-existing quotations, we'll never come up with original thought. And to make my point:

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), (attributed)

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

Philip G. Hamerton, "The Intellectual Life"

A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.

Lord Peter Wimsey, "Gaudy Night"

We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.

Harold Bloom (1930 - )

Originality is not seen in single words or even sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 - 1991), New York Times Magazine, Mar. 12, 1978

Perhaps you get the point :)