Check out these inspiring 30+ quotes on journaling, writing and keeping a diary.
Journaling is a powerful tool for personal growth, mental clarity, and emotional well-being. By committing thoughts, feelings, and experiences to paper, we can better understand our emotions, goals, and desires.
Journaling aids in stress reduction by providing a safe and private outlet for expressing concerns, challenges, aspirations and emotions.
It fosters creativity, improves writing skills, and enhances decision-making abilities by offering a space to explore ideas and reflect on potential solutions.
Journaling as a hobby supports memory enhancement and cognitive development by requiring the regular articulation and organization of thoughts, contributing to increased self-awareness and personal development.
Check out our full post on journaling for tips, resources and different styles of journaling to explore…
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I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget.
Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights
Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.
Christina Baldwin
This pouring thoughts out on paper has relieved me. I feel better and full of confidence and resolution.
Diet Eman, Things We Couldn’t Say
I had always felt things deeply, that was my nature. It was why I was a writer. Sometimes, the feelings were so huge, they needed a place to go.
Gemma Amor, White Pines
The best time to begin keeping a journal is whenever you decide to.
Hannah Hinchman, A Life In Hand: Creating the Illuminated Journal
You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
Jodi Picoult
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, A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945
The secret of keeping a journal is seeing it as a draft, a stepping-stone, a process.
Alexandra Johnson, Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal
The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.
Terry Pratchett
Document your dreams. Sketch that shape you saw. Write those lyrics before they fade out.
Michael Bassey Johnson, The Oneironaut’s Diary
Successful journals break the deadlock of introspective obsession.
Alexandra Johnson, Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal
A journal is a self-empowering, self-realizing map we create for ourselves to better our lives.
Andrew Pacholyk, Lead Us To A Place: Your Spiritual Journey Through Life’s Seasons
Writing your thoughts down can bring clarity amid confusion and stagnancy.
Robin S. Baker
Recounting our experiences gives us mastery over them. Whether in the context of psychotherapy, talking to an AA sponsor, confessing to a priest, confiding in a friend, or writing in a journal, our honest disclosure brings our behavior into relief, allowing us in some cases to see it for the first time. This is especially true for behaviors that involve a level of automaticity outside of conscious awareness.
Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
Flannery O’Connor
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
Journaling is like whispering to one’s self and listening at the same time.
Mina Murray
When I sit to write out my 3 year vision I let my thoughts and words flow. This is a journal entry written by your future self. Let it play out like a movie you’re watching, with you as the star in the setting you most love.
Michelle Jacobik
Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.
Louis L’Amour
I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.
Anne Frank
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Maya Angelou
Journal writing gives us insights into who we are, who we were, and who we can become.
Sandra Marinella, The Story You Need to Tell: Writing to Heal from Trauma, Illness, or Loss
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
Ernest Hemingway
There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one’s own experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least, in one’s own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient
Journaling is a great way to process any emotions that come up during challenging times – it can also help boost resilience.
Felecia Etienne, Overcoming Mediocrity: Limitless Women
Journaling is a great way to pay attention to “how it all came to be.” In looking back, you gain insight into (and appreciation for) your challenges, lessons, and perseverance.
Melissa Steginus, Self Care at Work: How to Reduce Stress, Boost Productivity, and Do More of What Matters
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
A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
Oscar Wilde
A good journal entry- like a good song, or sketch, or photograph- ought to break up the habitual and life away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.
Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World
Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are.
Carolyn V. Hamilton, Art Improv 101: How to Create a Personal Art Journal
Writing is medicine. It is an appropriate antidote to injury. It is an appropriate companion for any difficult change.
Julia Cameron
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
William Wordsworth
Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.
Susan Sontag
