LaTeX provides many environments for formatting displayed material. You can include quoted text with the quotation environment. For shorter quotes, you can use the quote environment. To format verse, use the verse environment. Otherwise, LaTeX fills the lines in a verse environment, just like any other environment.
Lists come in several flavors.
This is the first item of the list. Item No. 1. Item No. 2. A descriptive list uses the description environment. The letter class uses special definitions to format business letters.