(And why the heck do I say "whence"?)

I've been collecting quotes for years. Here are some good places I've found for the budding (or wilting) researcher.

Books of quotations: Yeah, I actually read these things. Scary, isn't it? Bartlett's is the classic here, but Bergen Evans' Dictionary of Quotations (which I borrowed in college from my friend, Dave Sutherland, and took to like a crack addict) is an even better source. One of these days I'll list my quotation books more thoroughly.

Internet mailing lists: There are dozens of Internet mailing lists which will shoot you one or more quotes a day. I used to have an extensivel list here of ones that I subscribed to, but I realized that (a) I really was getting way too much e-mail, and (b) I was getting way too many repeats. Do some Googling on "quotation mailing list" and similar bits, or search in various mailing list directories (e.g., Yahoo).

Quote-a-day calendars: I always try to get at least one per year. Now you know what to get me for Christmas. This sometimes distorts my statistics, but, what the heck, it's good fodder.

Internet research: Just do a search on "quotes" and "quotations" and stand back. A lot of places are pretty awful, but there are some real gems out there. I'd recommend the Bartleby.com quotations page. This has the (searchable) contents of the 1919 Bartlett's, the 1996 Columbia World of Quotations, and the 1998 Simpson's Contemporary Quotations, making up some 86k quotes all told. The citations are pretty good, too.

Another good site is Xrefer, though much of its content is no longer free.

Sometimes, especially with contemporary or "gaffe" quotes, verifying them is also important. The Urban Legends Reference Pages does some good debunking here.

Reading: I read a lot. A lot. If I run across something that looks worth quoting, I quote it. That leads to some authors being quoted in WIST who aren't found in many other places. Just doing my part to add to the primary material out there.