As a slow traveler, I’m constantly moving from place to place. I observe, reflect, and make connections between the places I visit and my state of mind while there.
I’ve used journaling to capture my mindset, focus and insights in the various locations I’ve visited over the past 15 years. It helps me create a tangible record of my adventures.
Mostly I’m just recording significant thoughts, realizations and ideas.
When I look back and read past entries, it’s as if I’m instantly transported back to that place and time. I can also see how my mindset has evolved, and track progress on key projects I’ve been working on on a continual basis.
If you’re looking to start up a similar practice, these quotes about journaling can help. What follows is a collection of insights from various thinkers that each share a unique perspective on what it means to document your thoughts (and how you go about doing it).
Enjoy.
Quotes About Journaling
I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
Flannery O’Connor
I love my journal as much as I love my phone. I find it to be a big part of my self-care to reflect on my day and write words that inspire me.
Franchesca Ramsey
Social media is just an online journal.
Jordyn Woods
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
Henry David Thoreau
This pouring thoughts out on paper has relieved me. I feel better and full of confidence and resolution.
Diet Eman
Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.
Christina Baldwin
Keeping a journal: The short entries are often as dry as instant tea. Writing them down is like pouring hot water over them to release their aroma.
Ernst Jünger
The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.
Virginia Woolf
The body will fail you, the mind will deceive you, but the spirit is the true essence of the Individual.
Phillip Anderson
You don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it.
Anne Lamott
Document your dreams. Sketch that shape you saw. Write those lyrics before they fade out.
Michael Bassey Johnson
Working with the morning pages, we begin to sort through the differences between our real feelings, which are often secret, and our official feelings, those on the record for public display.
Julia Cameron
These words need not be red for our blood to run through them.
Amanda Gorman
Writing your thoughts down can bring clarity amid confusion and stagnancy.
Robin S. Baker
Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you’ve learned to change the narrative in the next volume.
Ryder Carroll
I don’t journal to ‘be productive.’ I don’t do it to find great ideas or to put down prose I can later publish. The pages aren’t intended for anyone but me. It’s the most cost-effective therapy I’ve ever found.
Tim Ferriss
The very centre of your heart is where life begins – the most beautiful place on earth.
Rumi
If you haven’t been journaling through this, now is a good time to start. One day, you and people who love and loved you and people who will never know you may want to look back to understand how you survived.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Only when she has re-created in ink upon parchment what she saw does she fully understand it. Visions are not complete until they have been set down and stepped away from, turned this way and that in the hand.
Lauren Groff
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
William Wordsworth
If kids reflect on their days, they will become better problem-solvers of life.
Trevor Carss
Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.
Rob Bignell
He captures memories because if he forgets them, it’s as though they didn’t happen.
Donald Miller
Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you’ll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books.
Henry David Thoreau
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
Pat Conroy
These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.
Terry Tempest Williams
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
Susan Sontag
Keep writing, and one day you might just become a great writer.
Pablo Picasso
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
Ernest Hemingway
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya Angelou
A write is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
Oscar Wilde
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.
Virginia Woolf
The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
Anais Nin
Journaling can be an excellent way to increase self-awareness, discover and change habits.
Akiroq Brost
Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think.
Albert Einstein
A personal journal is an ideal environment in which to ‘become.’ It is a perfect place for you to think, feel, discover, expand, remember, and dream.
Brad Wilcox
Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.
Paulo Coelho
A diary or journal isn’t necessarily something that should be done daily so much as it is a clue to how to see the daily world around oneself differently.
Alexandra Johnson
What a comfort is this journal. I tell myself to myself and throw the burden on my book and feel relieved.
Anne Lister
Journaling helps you to remember how strong you truly are within yourself.
Asad Meah
Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn’t all a dream?
Ashleigh Brilliant
I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget.
Matthew McConaughey
Keeping a journal is the number-one best way to develop your written voice.
Camille Perri
I would consider my diary serves the same purpose as going for a walk or a run. They are all physical ways of clearing a mental landscape.
Chet Faker
The true purpose of illustrated journaling [is] to celebrate your life. No matter how small or mundane or redundant, each drawing and little essay you write to commemorate an event or an object or a place makes it all the more special
. Danny Gregory
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Henry David Thoreau
If you’re serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured, and unique individual, keep a journal.
Jim Rohn
Journaling is the perfect way to shift your emotions immediately and process your feelings without judgment, so you don’t get stuck in unpleasant experiences.
Kristen Butler
For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I’m a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.
Ruth Ozeki
Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you’ve learned to change the narrative in the next volume.
Ryder Carroll
As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Parting Words
Journaling isn’t just about self-reflection. It helps you get clarity on what’s most important, allowing you to make better decisions.
Plus, it’s just cool to look back and see how far you’ve come. This perspective might just be the biggest benefit I’ve seen.
What’s your favorite quote about journaling? Let me know in the comments!
P.S. If you liked this, you might also like these related quote collections:
- Quotes About Epiphanies
- Quotes About Finding Yourself
- Quotes About Reflection
- Quotes About Memories
- Quotes About Influence
Originally Published on May 18, 2023. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.
✍️ Guatape, Colombia
