The man, you will perceive, was making reminiscences – a sort of pleasure by ricochet, which comforts many in distress, and turns some others into sentimental libertines; and the whole book, if you will but look at it in that way, is seen to be a work of art to Pepys’ own address.
Diary Quotes
“What are you doing now?” he (Ralph Waldo Emerson) asked. “Do you keep a journal?” So I make my first entry today.
What if it’s boring – or if it’s not boring, it might be too revealing, or worse, it might be too revealing and still be boring.
It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one own’s identity.
I fall back on this journal just as some other poor devil takes to drink.
I always say, keep a diary and some day it’ll keep you.
I should live no more than I can record, as one should not have more corn growing than one can get at. There is a waste of good if it be not preserved.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in a train.
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.
