You know what it is like to read some excellent quote or poem that makes your heart soar, to commit it to memory and then find, a few days later that your memory has failed you. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a place to keep all of those  inspirational poems, clever quotes and book passages?A place where you could find them easily and enjoy reading them over and over? This is where the "commonplace book" comes in. The commonplace book can be any notebook, (preferably a durable, nice-looking one) where you can write down all of these things you read that are worth remembering. I started mine this year and I have been collecting quotes from everywhere since then. Whenever I read something worth remembering, I jot it down on a scrap of paper and stick it in-between the leaves of my commonplace book. Later, when I have more time, I copy it down neatly. I'm learning calligraphy right now so that my writing will look beautiful as well. Over the past few months, my commonplace book has become very important to me. In fact, just a few weeks ago, our family went on a two-day trip to a friend's house. I spent the whole two days jotting down quotes from a quote book I found there. Everyone thought it was most amusing that I stayed up until eleven at night writing down quotes, but I am the one who carried away the most from that trip and I will never regret having spent all of my time there writing.

            The idea of a commonplace book is not new. Did you know that George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Francis Bacon, John Milton, John Locke, George Elliot and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (he wrote Sherlock Holmes) all kept commonplace books as well?

            I think that keeping a commonplace book is a very good idea and you will never regret having done it.

Frodo