This web page contains my quotation file, gathered from personal reading over many years - and subject to ongoing additions. As I read a book or magazine, I jot a "Q" in the margin so I can return later and harvest that passage for my Quote File. Over the years, the file grew to more than 60 pages!

In addition to marking books with "Q's", I make a lot of other annotations (so you won't want to loan me any books!). For example, I underline a lot. When I want to underline many consecutive lines I generally put a vertical bar in the margin beside the text, sometimes assigning value to that annotation by adding one or more "*" or "+" symbols. I also scribble my thoughts in the margins, and sometimes the name of a person with whom I want to share the passage. After finishing a book, I generally re-scan my notations and gather my highlights, often writing them in the inside cover.  

You may wonder why go to all this trouble? Well, because... 

• I read like an engineer (slowly). To compensate, I am pretty selective with what I read. And I want to retain as much of it as possible. So, if I spend hours reading a book, it makes sense to take a half hour summarizing it before moving on.
• When I need a shot of encouragement or clarity, I read a few entries from my Quote File or the notations in one of my books and this usually gets me ready for another “run around the track.”
• These notations make preparation for preaching and teaching quite efficient.
• At New Life, we published one quote in every week's worship folder, so I needed a fresh supply. This Quote File was it.

Navigating the Quote File

For a long time, I intended to organize my Quote File by subject or author and make it available to others (like you). But the sorting task overwhelmed me. Fortunately, search engine technology came to the rescue. Indeed, today’s search engines greatly replace the older practice of sorting things into folders.

So here is my entire Quote File, unorganized but fully searchable. To search it, click on the link and...

• If you read it through a web browser, just use the browser's Search/Find function. 
• If you read it as a Google Doc, just use Google Doc's Search/Find function. 
• If you download it into your word processor, whatever that is, just use that Search/Find function.

Type a keyword or an author's name into any of these and your Search/Find function will quickly retrieve all pertinent quotes. 

I've embedded the Google Doc in this webpage (below). You can use this to scan the file, but not really to search it. To do any serious searching, you'll need to access the file outside of the confines of this webpage. You can do this just by clicking on the link above.

Hope you enjoy - and benefit from - this treasure-house full of quotations!

Blessing, Tim

For information about how to subscribe to the email or RSS notifications from this site, click on IsbellOnline News.