#1

Things I have tried

Read the only related forum post I could find, searched web.

What I’m trying to do

I’m experimenting with different ways to keep track of quotes that I like to reference, often with block references. It’s important to be able to quickly find a quote by author or topic.

  • I first tried creating a perm. note for each quote, which was time consuming, but has its advantages in that each quote can be linked independently.
  • Then I tried adding a “quotes” heading to the bottom my people pages so all the quotes can live together; it’s faster and I can quickly block reference a person page and scroll down to the quote block I want and quickly insert it.
  • But then I started thinking how cool it could be to use dataview to return specific lists of quotes by people projects, topic areas, time periods, etc. This seems more versatile but I’m not exactly sure the best way to set up the notes and metadata for optimum results.

Being a newbie, I’m curious as to how other people are handling organizing, finding, and referencing their quotes (or similar types of information). I don’t want to go too far along a path and then realize there was a better, simpler, or more future-proof way to think about it.

3 Likes
#2

I don’t have the same specific requirements. But I’ve changed from using the basic block quote

> Human beings face ever more complex ...
\- Doug Engelbart, 1961

to using the admonition plugin:

```ad-<type> # Admonition type. See below for a list of available types.
title:                  # Admonition title.
collapse:               # Create a collapsible admonition.
icon:                   # Override the icon.
color:                  # Override the color.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla et euismod nulla.

For example, you could create your own types and have more control over style.

Then you can use the embedded search query to find them:

```query
ad-   <add your own search terms>
1 Like
#3

Here’s where I’m currently at. Each quote has a dedicated perm note file for it, storing data of the quote in the YAML header.

---
tags: quotes
author: Epictetus
source: Discourses
aliases: "The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own"
---

Dataview to create table of all quotes

```dataview
table without ID author as "Author", source as "Source", aliases as "Quote"
from #quotes sort file.name asc```

I’ve removed the file name (and link to the note) using without ID, haven’t decided on how to proceed with quote file names, currently they aren’t standardised and I don’t think having a consistent quote file name structure will provide any benefits.

Having the quote as an aliases allows me to begin typing any section of the quote inside brackets and Obsidian begins searching for the quote.

I’m thinking about adding another YAML field of quote-tags to add tags to quotes, which should then make searching of quotes relating to a topic easier, for example a lookup for all Stoic quotes. However, I don’t know if I want the hassle of tagging each quote and if each quote isn’t tagged (and tags maintained) then it kinda defeats the purpose of tagging in the first place.

1 Like
#4

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