Contents -AUTHOR INDEX -KEYWORD INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

How to Use This Book

Quotation books, surprisingly enough, are a rather recent invention. The classic Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations started the tradition in this country and was begun in 1855 by the owner of the University Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Burton Stevenson’s massive Home Book of Quotations started in 1934, and the dignified Oxford Dictionary of Quotations did not appear until 1941. Each of these is organized in a different way, depending on the primary purpose of the author. Some are alphabetical lists by the source of the quotation, others are arranged chronologically, and in others the quotations are clustered by subject content.

Since this present collection was accumulated through the years on the traditional library three-by-five cards, the cards could have been sorted by any of the three traditional sequences, but it was thought that inasmuch as the primary use of the collection would be in the preparation of public speeches, the material would be most useful in subject categories which could be browsed for apt statements in the construction of speech texts. Thus, the materials can be found in one of three ways:

The List of Subjects, with appropriate “see” and “see also” references, follows this introduction; and there is also a subject index. Using them will be the best approach if you are looking for an appropriate quotation without having a specific one in mind before you start.

If you are searching for a specific “half-remembered, almost forgotten” quotation, and can only recall a word or phrase, this alphabetical index of keywords will be the most efficient approach. This index refers you to the number of the specific citation.

If you can recall who said the quotation you seek, all items included in this collection by that author can be found in the alphabetical author index. Again, the reference is to the number of the various citations included from that speaker.

Good Hunting!