commonplace books
Curated quotation collections
Commonplace books are personal notebooks for collecting passages, quotes, ideas, and observations that the keeper finds worth preserving.
The practice dates to the Renaissance, when readers would transcribe memorable excerpts from their reading alongside their own reflections.
Unlike a diary, which records daily events, a commonplace book gathers intellectual material by theme or interest: Her commonplace book was full of poetry fragments and botanical notes.
The tradition has found new life in digital note-taking systems.
- quotationsRepeated words with attribution
- annotationsExplanatory additions to documents
- reflectionsReturned light or thought
- excerptsSelected passages from texts
- memorabiliaCollected items of significance
notebooks · aphorisms · journaling · maxims · handbooks · Renaissance humanism · compilation · recording · Thomas Jefferson · miscellanies · note-taking · pen and ink · curating · entries · scrapbooks · chronicle · chapbooks · reading habits
commonplace booksdiaries
Personal daily records
journals · personal diaries · daybooks · logbooks · calendars
commonplace bookspersonal diaries
Private daily written records
autobiographies · memoirs · original manuscripts · dream journals · travel journals
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