Mia and I are reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens this month. I stumbled upon this site yesterday and decided that I would use some of Dickens' quotes in starting a commonplace book for Mia. I think I have talked about this type of book before. It is a book solely for quotes, songs, poems, or Scripture verses that speak to you. Some people use a Commonplace book for figures of Rhetoric, others use it for examples of the virtues or the Great Ideas. For now, I just want Mia to use this book to put in quotes that speak truth, beauty and goodness. She will use these verses for copywork and use her best writing. I haven't decided if I will have her do it incursive (she is still a bit shaky with this) or printing. I am hoping that if I get her started well, she will be able to do this on her own without any prompting from her mom.
Anyway, I want to use the Commonplace Book for some quotes from Dickens. There are many to choose from so we might do a few a week until we are done his book of Scrooge. Here are some interesting ones that I copied.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little bit before it will explain itself.
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order and diligence, wihtout the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.
Life is made of ever so many partings melded together.
Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.