On keeping a commonplace book

A commonplace book is an old idea: a notebook where you copy passages that struck you, along with a line or two about why. People kept them for centuries before anyone had a bookmarks bar.

I started one three years ago, in a plain A5 notebook, after realising I had saved hundreds of links and could not remember a single thing from any of them.

Copying by hand is the whole point. It is slow enough that I only copy what I really want to keep, and writing a sentence out makes me read it more carefully than I did the first time.

I add the date, where it came from, and sometimes a reply. Over time the replies have become as interesting to me as the quotes, because they show me what I was thinking about that month.

There is no index, no tags, no search. When I want to find something, I flip through. I usually find something else on the way, which is often better.