Commonplace book

I did this in thirty pages of closely written matter, of which a pressed copy remains in my commonplace-book.

The compiler of a commonplace book is on his own; he can put in anything that appeals to him: aphorisms, poems, parts of poems, newspaper clippings, song lyrics, bits of humor, overheard conversations—anything that has struck him as exciting, that he has found stimulating, odd or amusing.

But the other kind of commonplace book was different. Its goal was to gather a collection of the wisest statements, usually of the ancients, for future meditation.

Popularized in a previous period of information overload, the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the commonplace book was more than a diary or journal of personal reflections. It was a learning tool that the educated class used to understand a rapidly changing world and their place in it.