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Quotations about Journaling,
Keeping Diaries, Lists, & Scrapbooks
Emerson's best sentences are often to be found in those journals in which he jotted down his thoughts and intuitions — the deposit, drop by drop, and day by day, of the lifelong soliloquy of his mind. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, A Treasury of English Aphorisms, 1928
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, — to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization. It is a good sign then when young men keep journals and old gentlemen take to publishing reminiscences. It helps the general atmosphere of thought and enriches everyone a little. ~John Jay Chapman, Memories and Milestones, 1915
I have always liked the notion of keeping a written account of my thoughts and feelings, especially of my feelings, for they are usually all jumbled up in my mind, like ribbons on a remnant counter, but after I have set them down in black and white where I can stand off and look at them they are no more complicated than sardines in a box. Another reason is that in the diaries, correspondence and love-letters of interesting people (great people, I mean) which I have read, I have found there is a sort of interest which is lacking in their stiff-standing-collar and high-heeled-shoes productions. ~Kate Trimble Sharber, At the Age of Eve, 1911
DIARY. An honest autobiography. ~Charles Wayland Towne, The Foolish Dictionary, Executed by Gideon Wurdz, Master of Pholly, Doctor of Loquacious Lunacy, etc., 1904
If by any chance, you have any old diaries of yours lying around in a box, take my advice and don't start browsing through them. It is hard enough to keep one's chin up these days without digging back into the past to make a monkey of one's self. ~Robert Benchley, "The Soothsayer," From Bed to Worse, 1934
Journal: fitting your heart and soul into ruled lines. ~Terri Guillemets, "Inside the lines, outside the box," 1998
CECILY: I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about them.
MISS PRISM: Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.
CECILY: Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened...
~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
Lists are the butterfly nets that catch my fleeting thoughts... ~Betsy Cañas Garmon, 2009, betsygarmon.com
When Gavin came to Thrums he was as I am now, for the pages lay before him on which he was to write his life. Yet he was not quite as I am. The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. ~J. M. Barrie, The Little Minister, 1891
Do you notice that I call it a record, and not a diary? This is because I expect to write in it only occasionally — skim the cream of events, as it were, instead of boring you with the details of the daily milking. ~Kate Trimble Sharber, At the Age of Eve, 1911
A journal is a journey — our own personal passages of self. ~Terri Guillemets, "Voyages," 1993
Happy lovers keep no diary. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor
I don't like diaries. I particularly
To journal is a present of the past to your future self. ~Terri Guillemets, "Nights not standing," 1996
I like to jot down thoughts and ideas as I tread life's garden, for then sometimes when I am weary I can turn a leaf and find what my mood was on a certain day and that changes a train of thought and brings back sunshine. ~Helen Rose Anne Milman Crofton, My Kalendar of Country Delights, 1903
Did you read what this writer dug up in George Washington's diary? I was so ashamed I sat up all night reading it. This should be a lesson to Presidents to either behave themselves or not to keep a diary. ~Will Rogers (1879–1935)
Keep a diary even if you rip it up every night. ~Terri Guillemets, "Meridian ink," 1995 [so that your heart may write to you
One may become wiser and better by several Methods of employing one's Self in Secrecy and Silence... I would... recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping of a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. The Kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectify the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for. ~Joseph Addison, 1712
I intend to make a true and particular account... These ghosts have been upon my mind so long, that the sooner I get them off, and fix them for ever on this paper — make a case of them, like the butterflies at the British Museum — the better for me, I'm inclined to think. ~Frederick William Robinson, Twelve O'Clock, 1861
The handwriting was my own, but the words were the words of a stranger, so that as I read I wondered to myself, saying: did I ever think this? did I really hope that? did I plan to do this? did I resolve to be such? does life, then, look so to the eyes of a young man? ~Jerome K. Jerome, Novel Notes, 1893
I'm going to keep this diary anyhow, and just hand it down to my grandchildren... Maybe some rainy day, a hundred years from now, a little girl will find this book in the attic, all covered with dust, and will sit down and read it, while the rain sounds soft and pattery on the outside, and her mother calls and calls without getting an answer. ~Kate Trimble Sharber, The Annals of Ann, 1910
The sky
is that beautiful old parchment
in which the sun
and the moon
keep their diary...
~Alfred Kreymborg
Sometimes I imagine a get-together where I introduce my family to my blogger friends and my blogger friends introduce my family to me. ~Robert Brault, 2011, rbrault.blogspot.com
Journal. — Kinda like a blog, but on this thing called paper. ~Terri Guillemets, "Audience of one," 2015
A journal is not nearly so much a book in which you tell what you do as one in which you tell what you would like to do. ~Kate Trimble Sharber, At the Age of Eve, 1911
Cousin Eunice says nearly all famous people keep a diary for folks to read after they're dead. ~Kate Trimble Sharber, The Annals of Ann, 1910
Keep a diary, my dear, and later on, perhaps, the diary will keep you. ~Margot Asquith, 1922 [quoteinvestigator.com]
Fat later developed a theory that the universe is made out of information. He started keeping a journal — had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person. His encounter with God was all there on the pages in his — Fat's, not God's — handwriting. ~Philip K. Dick, VALIS, 1981
There are two kinds of people that keep diaries, married ones and single ones. The single ones fill theirs full of poetry; the married ones tell how much it costs to keep house. ~Kate Trimble Sharber, The Annals of Ann, 1910
Sometimes healing is about not journaling — about living and forgetting that you even have a journal. ~Terri Guillemets, "The healing journal," 2010
These were the archives of the history of his own heart. ~Max Nordau (1849–1923), "The Art of Growing Old," How Women Love and Other Tales (Soul Analysis), translated from the German by an unnamed translator, 1896 [drawers of photos, letters, and other memories
Time flies... scrapbook it. ~Vivian Perez-Espinosa, owner of
A scar is a memory from the scrapbook your body is keeping about you. ~Terri Guillemets
Health is a journal your body keeps about you. ~Terri Guillemets
This page is mine. ~Rowland C. Sheldon, 1926
In making out your garden plan this year you will probably find yourself handicapped by the lack of accurate knowledge about your plants of last year — how much of each thing you used, the dates of the last frost in the spring and the first killing frost in autumn, when the various insect pests appeared, when you made your last sowing for winter vegetables, how long after planting it took the different varieties of vegetables to mature, and a score of other things, all of which you have had to guess at with no degree of certainty. Provide now against next spring. Get a cheap diary and leave it in the pocket of your work clothes or hang it up in the tool shed. In it jot down from time to time the things you particularly want to keep track of. ~Frederick Frye Rockwell, Around the Year in the Garden: A Seasonable Guide and Reminder for Work with Vegetables, Fruits, and Flowers, and Under Glass, "February: First Week, Make a Plan Now — And Follow It This Summer: Keep a Garden Diary," 1913
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published 2002 Sep 5
revised 2023 Oct 25
last saved 2025 Apr 1
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