Harley Hahn Newsletter #7

Harley Hahn Newsletter

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          |                          |
          |  HARLEY HAHN NEWSLETTER  |
          |            #7            |
          |                          |
          |    February 19, 2002     |
          |                          |
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Quotable Women
==============

We all know that men and women look at the world
differently.  I have recently spent many hours
reading hundreds of quotations from smart and
well-spoken women, and I have to tell you, the
experience has changed the way I think about life.

Here is how it happened.

You may know that, each year, I publish a new
edition of "Harley Hahn's Internet Yellow Pages".
This book is a guide to life, annotated with the
addresses of thousands of Internet resources: Web
sites, mailing lists, Usenet discussion groups,
and IRC channels.  The current Yellow Pages is the
2002 (Ninth) Edition.

Way back in the summer of 1997, my researchers and
I were working on the 1998 Edition.  When it came
time to revise the Quotations section of the book,
I thought it would be a good idea to find some
collections of quotations by women.  To my
surprise, we were not able to find even one
collection of women's quotes on the Internet.

So, I decided to make one.

My researchers and I collected a great many
quotations, and I created a Web page for them. I
called the collection "Quotable Women".

Over the years, I would add a few quotations here
and there, but, for the most part, the archive
stayed pretty much the way it was when we created
it in 1997.

Some time ago, I decided to update the entire
collection, and two of my friends volunteered
their help: Moira Atkinson (one of my readers) and
Elaine McIntyre (one of my researchers).

When I first created the archive, my goal was to
find as many women's quotations as I could. This
time around, I decided to look for the very best
quotations: the ones that were truly inspirational,
wise or witty.  At the same time, I was determined
to eliminate all the sub-standard quotes, the ones
that were insipid, sarcastic, pessimistic or
mean-spirited.

In order to find new material, Moira, Elaine and I
spent many, many hours reading hundreds of women's
quotations, looking for the very best ones.  Once
the job was done, I reread the entire contents of
the original archive, eliminating all the
quotations that I felt were not good enough to
stay in the collection.

As a result, the Quotable Women archive now has
858 excellent quotations, offering wisdom,
comfort, inspiration and humor.

Where, you might ask, do the quotations come from?
Many of them come from sources on the Web. Others
come from people I know (I have a habit of taking
notes when I talk on the phone), books or articles
I have read, or comments I have heard on the radio.

I learned a lot from what these women had to say,
and I know you will too.  You can find the entire
Quotable Women archive at:

http://www.harley.com/womens-quotes/

If you would like to look at one quotation at a
time, try:

http://www.harley.com/cgi-bin/random-women-quote.pl

Each time you visit this page, you will see a
different quote.

-- Harley Hahn