I use Readwise for managing saved quotes, not just my highlights. I tag them as needed, and find the search feature to be effective.
I also like that you can change the metadata or even add or change the artwork for each quote. I do this on my blog and I like the way it looks.
Exporting works well, and they have beta’s for connecting and syncing via several apps like Roam, Notion, and Obsidian.
What about literature management software like Zotero or Citavi? They all are capable of storing quotes belonging to a source.
I’ve been using Workflowy a lot lately and I must say, between the tagging and search options it’s very easy to store lots of things in there/retrieve them quickly.
I have a bullet as a folder with sub bullets that are the quotes I like. If you use Chrome they have a decent extension for clipping
If you use tagging, I would think that you could use something as simple as Apple Notes. You could search by tagged authors or tagged subjects and it’s free.
All the other apps mentioned (Devonthink, Obsidian, Numbers…) could be used as well but I haven’t seen TapForms mentioned. It’s like a light database app where you can define your own fields. I haven’t used it in a while so I’m not sure on the current searchability with Spotlight - I like to search from anywhere, not just within an app. There are separate paid apps for MacOS and iOS but (thankfully) not a subscription.
Obsidian.
In-line field, to avoid making so many extra pages
quote:: “That’s what she said”
Dataview query:
table quote as Quotes from ""
where quote
Fundamentally this is the obvious answer.
For a more feature-rich experience based from the spreadsheet approach, check out Notenik.app [^1] which is partially a successor to an application originally developed by the program’s author that was specially for collecting quotations.
[^1]: Notenik - This could be serious competition for Obsidian et al
I save notes usually with Drafts, and just keep them there.
They all get some Tags, while I save them, and could easily be found, sorted and so one on that base.
From my side, the big problem with Notenik is the missing mobile version.
While the Mac Version really seems to be a working solution, I (and I would assume a lot of other user) am in need to have my Notes on my iPhone/iPad as well, and it seems, that the developer himself is skeptical if there will be a mobile Version at all.
The problem for me is that I already know and love NotePlan on the Mac, which also has a great iPhone app.
But at first look I’m not seeing Notenik as a replacement for NotePlan. Notenik has a “notebook-y” feel to it which may find a place in my workflow for projects. It also seems to have some of the abilities of a flat-file database! So some things that I now have in spreadsheets may be better in Notenik!
I have a strong opinion. There is simply no need for a mobile Notenik application in the same way that Emacs, Vi or even BBEdit or Tinderbox do not need one. I could imagine someone building off of the source code to provide a mobile app with a subset of features that couldn’t be achieved with a mobile text editing app like 1Writer, iA Writer or Notebooks. The only thing I can imagine that would be missing is making new notes with the user’s defined note Labels/metadata. I don’t see why/how someone would comfortably want to leverage the rest of Notenik’s features from a mobile interface.
I sort of enjoy the fact that Notenik is as Desktop only app. Where is the desktop computing renaissance. No more mobile apps. Get a netbook! Build a cyber deck!
I could see a web app being useful, but I wouldn’t want Herb to have the responsibility of tending to users’ sync, privacy, security and reliability needs. The app is FOSS, I would love to see someone come up with a self-hosted iteration of the app that could be setup on a server, provide access to Collections with a simple GUI and allow the user to be responsible for what matters next.
At the end of the day, as simple as it is to devise a mobile solution to Notenik, it is simple for someone with the ability to construct an iteration of the software to achieve it. This is the beauty of it being a relatively simple application (as far as text manipulation goes) and being open source.
This is how I came to appreciate the application. I am picky about what goes into it. I think everyone intrigued by Notenik should read through the documentation (here is a good start) and figure out how many Collections and Collection types that they want to begin with. The use of Classes within a Collection can drastically change how many Collections a person needs (if not just one).
I’ve gone through a lot of different iterations of Collections with Notenik.
@hbowie has a pretty methodological approach to its development and I’ve enjoyed keeping up with the software, wrapping my mind around how to use new or undiscovered features to continuously work with my files.
If I met someone who was interested in software like Emacs or Tinderbox but I knew that they needed time developing the patience and dexterity to enjoy using them, I would sit them down with Notenik and its documentation first. Give them 30 minutes to figure out what they are trying to achieve with their data and another 30 to understand the app. I think that they’d get the hang of it and maybe become hooked on it.
Please pardon me if I got carried away. Notenik…evokes a certain enthusiasm toward computing in me. @Ulli and @karlnyhus, the two of you are actually some of my favorite posters here.
My old Drill Instructor in the Army always said:
“It is much better, to have a strong opinion, rather than a weak proof!” 
I wouldn’t compare an App, where I want to actually save my Notes, with a Texteditor like BBEdit or similar.
I also do not miss BBEdit on my iPhone, because I just have no need to have it there.
But from my point of view, that is totally different, if it comes to my notes, I want to have a look onto, also while I am not at my Desktop.
Simple example, I have a note within currently Obsidian, what to pick up on my next trip towards the hardware store.
This note makes only a sense to me, if I could read it while I stand in the store, not if I need to memorize it, before I leave home.
Notenik leaves a good first impression with me, the developer seems to be simpatico (as far as I could tell from what I have seen on the Internet) and it would be a pleasure to support someone like that, but it just did not fit into my (and I think a lot of other guys) portfolio, as I need to get access to my notes, while I am away from the office/home.
I understand where you’re coming from better.
The comparison of Notenik to apps like BBEdit was more to the tune that they both deal roughly with plain text files, albeit to different objectives. The same can obscurely be said with Tinderbox, but not so obscurely because .tbx files are XML. With the exception of Tinderbox, files made in BBEdit, Notenik, Vi and Emacs are are essentially portable in the sense that they can be read and written between each other at the expense of a few functions that don’t compromise readability or write-ability.
Theoretically, I think for your use case and for those with similar one’s, it could help to take an approach similar to what I suggested: using another application as an auxiliary. This may not be desirable for some who want the bulk of certain features from Notenik, but if one only desire to view existing notes, this could work. Another way is to build a script that would generate and export your notes in a preferred format for viewing. As long as you know the output document’s syntax well enough you can devise a template for it that will display a Notenik note in the format that you desire.
Editing is a different story depending on what a person wants to achieve. It’s easy though for a person to start a note in a different text editing application with just a “Title” and “Body” field and fill in the rest on the desktop. Easy, but not optimal for all.
I’m waxing poetic here. I’m not trying to force feed anyone this software. These are just reinterpretations of what I’ve gathered from the documentation. It’s tough expounding on the virtues of an application in a way that will make into account the individual preferences and needs of every device owner on the planet. Such is the manner of the times that we live in.
Notenik in a weird way is a piece of software that is very “UNIX-y” in the sense that it can fit in an “pipe” to other programs if needed. Or do “one thing” well and with the advancements in software as of 2022, many other things.
Hope this isn’t a weak point.
This Notenik app is a great find. I converted a simple spreadsheet to a Notenik collection by exporting it to a CSV (comma separated value file) and hand-editing the template file for the Notenik collection to match the field names and field types coming from the CSV file. The result was a nice form interface for the data (one record per screen rather than one record per line in a spreadsheet grid format).
I used to save quotes in Journler but that is long gone. Now I use a Scrivener project and am slowly importing the 1,500 quotes from Journler. It isn’t exactly the same but I have managed to recreate many of Journler’s features except for one that I relied on namely smart folders. Too involved in other projects (software and not) to think about creating a Journler work-a-like.
I’ve modified how I keep my quotes.
Now they are primarily in a YAML text file (kind of like JSON, but both human- and computer-readable) that lives in a folder that is also a git repo.
That repo feeds a set of python scripts on a server that will deliver me a random quote (in json or plain text); multiple random quotes; one, several or all quotes from sources matching a search phrase (eg, William Shake); or one/several/all quotes containing a search string (eg, wherefore art).
I used this mini-API, in turn, to power a random-quote widget on my phone (using Scriptable), a random quote in my daily note in NotePlan, and a random quote key on PyKeys, the Pythonista keyboard for iOS. It also makes it really easy to quickly find any quote I’ve saved, anywhere I have an internet connection.
Thanks for this comparison. I’ve used JSON but only heard of YAML, never used it. I like it. Searching a bit, I found this article JSON vs. YAML: A Dive Into 2 Popular Data Serialization Languages | Built In which was helpful.
I really like yaml for anything I want a computer to be able to parse, but I still want to be able to read – or in this case, also add entries manually. Here are two quotes in YAML:
- quote: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
source: "Samuel Beckett"
detail: ""
long: false
- quote: "Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die."
source: "Daniel Burnham"
detail: "Seen in CTA Midway station corridor"
long: false
That’s the equivalent of JSON:
[
{"quote": "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.", "source": "Samuel Beckett", "detail": "", "long": "false"},
{"quote": "Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.", "source": "Daniel Burnham", "detail": "Seen in CTA Midway station corridor", "long": "false"}
]
This is a great thread!
I mostly follow this:
More seriously though, my set-up is not great, so I’m sharing it as an example of how not to set it up 
I originally had a paper notebook, which I still maintain. I keep an index in it of authors, but they’re just added as I add them to the notebook, which means they’re not alphabetised. If I want to find an author, I have to skim through pages of names to find who I am after.
I decided one Obsidian vault could work for this, and that I could tag the quotes to try and sort them by topic. I implemented this poorly. I felt saving the quotes by author name wasn’t very useful, so I went with: “main theme - 1234 - author surname - key word”. This, it turns out, is quite annoying. Firstly, I’m tagging the quotes, so I already know what the theme is, why am I duplicating that? Secondly, there is no way to easily sort by author. My main issue is that I don’t want to tag by author and have all the author tags mixed in with the topic tags. Ideally I’d have two separate “tag lists” that don’t mix, and I could choose which one I look at.
This weekend when I got annoyed with my system again, I made a spreadsheet of all my authors and sorted it alphabetically, which means I now have a ridiculous 3-way system of Obsidian, my paper notebook, and a spreadsheet index.
I love DevonThink, and initially started my quotes database in there, but I don’t see how that’s any better at handling my badly implemented set up - I still want two seperate tag lists.
I don’t think this is a failing of technology, I think I designed my system very badly, but even so I wish someone had just made an app specifically for this purpose and saved me the headache At some point I’m going to have to blow up this system and start a better version from scratch somewhere else.
(You probably already know this?) Stick to JUST the spreadsheet (or use the Notenik app if you would prefer a form interface as opposed to the spreadsheet’s grid layout). Either way, you can put author, theme, keyword, etc in different columns (fields) and sort the quotes back and forth, up and down, however you need them at any given moment. 
Or use search.
Well now. I’ve spent the last couple of hours playing with Notenik to see if it was of any value to quote management, and it is an absolute delight. It even has a template when you set up your “collection” called “commonplace book” where you can set default fields for author, title, etc.!
Since one of my main priorities nowadays is not having my data locked in somewhere, I love that it’s all plain text and stored in a location of your choosing. For fun I even indexed the test folder in DT to see if it played nicely (it does, not that I really expected otherwise!).
For others, I see that it has a menu option for opening a random note, and it looks like it’s got some kind of URL function, so there’s probably something clever scripting types could do to make it even more powerful (I am not one of these people, but I assume menu options hint at things that can be scripted).
The interface isn’t as shiny as Obsidian, but actually it can handle what I was lamenting at earlier when I talked about my own failed system: I can sort by author and maintain a separate list of tags.
I can’t believe this app is free!