‘The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations’ -- Isaac D’Israeli
Ha. I’ve always wanted to start off with a quote. Quotes are such wonderful things to use whenever you’re writing something, be it a term essay, news article or just a plain old blog sprinkled with drolleries to bait the ugly and the bored.
I remembered during my years in university, I constantly dropped quotable quotes, heck, even the unquotable ones, into my term essays. First, it makes me look well read, just as you probably would gaze at me with adoring eyes as if I’m shitting diamonds from a platinum asshole by the time you finish reading this entry. I’m not kidding! If you quote from, say, Mother Teresa, readers would think you’d read her entire life story and had picked out the most quotable quote out of the approximately 100 million sentences (figure quoted from very reliable sources) she’d ever said. I’m sure they’ll be very impressed. Maybe even believe you’re on the way to Sainthood. One thing I know for sure, my lecturers were all suckers for quotes. I would never fail to get a good grade whenever I quoted from others, especially if 'the others' are them.
Of course, even if the readers are not impressed by the quotes you’ve taken, you’ll be seconded by the efforts made in rooting out those quotes. The more quotes you include, equal to more efforts being made in finding those quotes. At least that’s the impression you want people to have. In reality, the equation of ‘more quotes = more efforts’ does not necessary hold water in a milk bucket. In fact, quoting can be as simple as digging your nose, unless you’ve very thick fingers and small/hairy nostrils. All you have to do is to pop into any library or bookstore; even the corner newsstand may do the job. Pick a stack of books or magazines at random. It doesn’t matter what kind of books or magazines they are. The golden rule of quoting is ‘Everything is Quotable for Anything’, Once you’ve pick out the books, get seated down and the fun begins! Blindfold yourself, flip through the pages of each book and poke your finger in at random. Ta da! You’ve got yourself a quote! Repeat steps.
Next, quotes will help you fill up the word count faster than you can yell Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, a word quoted from Mary Poppins. This is a very important factor (the filling up of word count, not the yelling), particularly when you get lecturers who’re trained at the Institute of the Mentally Deranged and probably headed by Dr Evil. They tend to give you a very high word limit, though the word ‘limit’ is an oxymoron since I usually have trouble reaching it, in an impossibly short time (after discounting the time I procrastinated of course, which wasn’t that long I assure you). So quotes come in very handy. Let’s take the topic on love for example; a typical quote-filled paragraph will look like this:
"To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia -- to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess (H.L. Mencken, 1919). This statement is partly supported by Katharine Hepburn (19XX), who ‘sometimes wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.’ However, Pearl S. Buck (19XX) argued that ‘The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration’. Thus one has to make love with a candle and whip (Playboy, Issue XX, 19XX) as loving involves struggle, resistance, risk (C. Heyward, 19XX). When this occurs, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace (Dalai Lama, 19XX)."
Easily, within 5 minutes, I’ve written a relatively long and coherent paragraph discussing about the issue of love. It’s almost an effortless effort, with the words in red the only contributions I truly made. I’ve quoted from a political commentator (H.L. Mencken), an actress (K.Hepburn) and a Nobel Laureate (P.S.Buck). I even have C. Heyward, a feminist, and the Dalai Lama supporting the art of making love as noted in Playboy (totally fictitious of course, since I’ve never read Playboy before).
It also helps a lot if you’re seen quoting from someone who has been knighted. It’ll give credence to whatever you’re writing, even though nobody may recognise the name that comes after the ‘Sir’ or it may be totally irrelevant to what you’re writing. After all, for someone who’s been knighted, he must have certain level of intelligence right? For all we care, the ‘Sir’ may have came about be it because he invented the first flushable toilet for the Queen or because he taught the Queen’s poodle yoga. What I’m saying here is it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to bother about the background of how the knighthood is achieved. Nobody’s going to remark that a quote from Sir Who-teach-poodle-yoga is better than Sir Who-teach-elephant-Swan-Lake. Both will look just as daintily good.
I’m pretty sure that there are many more advantages to quoting apart from those I’ve mentioned. Most certainly as numerous as the number of pimples on my face. There’s no necessity for me to advocate quoting much further as I’m sure you’re smart enough to know them already. If not, I’ll leave you with this quote by Mary Pettibone Poole, ‘ The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is (me!!))’