Showing posts with label commonplace book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label commonplace book. Show all posts

Monday, July 07, 2008

My "Commonplace Book"


I've been trying to clear out a storage unit I have had ever since I moved out of my apartment into Cat's house. (I sorta married into property.)

Anyone who has tried to merge two households together knows what problems this often creates. So I have had a storage unit at a local U-Haul place that has been costing me monthly rent for the past 6 years. Every summer I have pledged to get in there to clear out, throw away, donate or keep what I find.

In some ways, it's like Christmas in July. I'm discovering a lot of stuff that I thought I had lost: books, pictures, furniture, and a lot of junk.

One thing I came across was a "Commonplace Book" I started way back in the 80's. This was a little brown pocket journal that I used to write down thoughts, quotes and information that I discovered in my reading and studies. (I was a graduate student for nearly all of the 1980s.)

Here are some of the items I wrote down in the book:

A library is a sort of ammunition dump of unexploded arguments ready to burst forth the moment a live reader opens a book.--Jacques Barzum and Henry F. Graff, The Modern Researcher

The ability to remain independent is God's greatest weapon against evil.--Personal Thought

Ignorance is the night of the mind.--African Proverb

He that goeth about to persuade the multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favorable hearers.--Richard Hooker

Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.--Isaiah 5:8 [This is a warning for our time!