If you have been following us on the Endpaper Blog for a while, chances are you won’t need too much convincing to pick up the practice of journalling. If you’re curious to learn more about the many benefits of journalling, check out some of our informative posts here. But just in case you need a little push to start this life-changing habit, check out these inspirational quotes on journalling that will definitely have you searching for the perfect journal to start with.
“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather – in many cases – offers an alternative to it.”
– Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals And Notebooks, 1947–1963
“In the diary you find proof that in situations which today would seem unbearable, you lived, looked around and wrote down observations, that this right hand moved then as it does today, when we may be wiser because we are able to look back upon our former condition, and for that very reason have got to admit the courage of our earlier striving in which we persisted even in sheer ignorance.”
– Franz Kafka, The Diaries 1910-1923
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
– William Wordsworth
“I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time.”
– Mina Murray writing in her journal in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
“As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.”
– William Makepeace Thackeray, The History Of Henry Esmond
“Never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things — childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves — that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers.”
– Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays And Criticism 1981–1991
“A diary is useful during conscious, intentional, and painful spiritual evolutions.”
– André Gide, Journals: 1889–1913
“Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter. And lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.”
– Jack London, “Getting Into Print,” The Editor
“What a comfort is this journal.
– Anne Lister
I tell myself to myself and throw the burden on my book and feel relieved.”
“People who keep journals have life twice.”
– Jessamyn West
