Sayings of the Sages | Pt. 3 of A Commonplace Book of Wisdom

I'm Sharing the Wisdom I've Found With You

I’m going to share a ton of new wise sayings from my pocket proverbs commonplace book with my paid subscribers in this entry below, but first let me say a bit about commonplace books and the style I’m utilizing in this digital commonplace book, comprised of Substack posts like this one, which I’m calling Sayings of the Sages.

For those whose wisdom is imaginary enjoy the favour of judges similarly qualified.

-Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 44/82 (Penguin Classics, pg. 9)

Commonplace books used to have two uses: personal use and public use. Personal use commonplace books are enjoying a major comeback right now. These are mostly collections of quotes from books people have read, usually kept in a notebook, and they’re meant for personal reflection. This style of commonplace booking exploded during the Renaissance, then died out a bit, but is now exploding in popularity once more.

But people also used to publish their commonplace books for others to read. This public use style of commonplace books goes all the way back through Roman rhetoricians like Quintilian and Cicero—who added quotations to their rhetorical training manuals—and back further at least as far back as King Solomon and his commonplace book known as The Book of Proverbs. King Solomon collected sayings of the wise, including his own, and had them written up in a book to serve as guidance for his sons—which didn’t work, his sons were evil fools. But that was probably Solomon’s fault and not his commonplace book’s fault.

I’m bringing back the public use commonplace book right here on my Substack! You’re about to read the third installment. But before the wise sayings, I have to talk more about commonplace books.

What is a Commonplace Book?

Now I love commonplace books. I’ve been utilizing them for the past 12 years—even before I knew to call them commonplace books. Throughout my time using them, and then eventually reading about them, I’ve discovered something like 8 different kinds of commonplace books. Before I cover those, let me give my own working definition of a commonplace book first for the uninitiated:

Commonplace books are collections of quotations, usually kept in a notebook, which are organized according to a particular scope and for a particular purpose, often according to ‘commonplaces’ or headings.

So that’s at least a kind of characterization of a commonplace book and from it I think we can derive 8 different kinds of commonplace books.

Scope

The particular scope will give us 2 different kinds of commonplace book (CPB). Is the scope of the CPB general or limited to a particular topic? A general scope CPB will be a place where you put all your quotes from all different genres and modes of media. A topic-specific CPB will be limited in its scope, maybe it’s a CPB just for quotes from the Dune universe (you might call you CPB your Orange Catholic Bible), or maybe it’s limited to philosophy quotes or philosophy of mind more particularly. So, the scope gives us 2 different CPBs: general and topic-specific.

Purpose

Next up we have the particular purpose which will give us 4 more kinds of CPBs. Is the CPB meant solely as a collection of quotations to reflect on, or is the CPB a place where you’re actively thinking through the quotations and adding your own notes? If it’s solely a collection of quotes, I call it a ‘treasury’ CPB—it’s a storehouse for your quotations. If it’s a place where you’re manuscripting out your own thoughts on the quotations you’ve gathered—marking them up with annotations, exegeting, commenting on, abstracting arguments from, manuscripting a paper or an essay, etc.—then I call it a ‘manuscript’ CPB.

Is the CPB meant for your own personal use, or is it meant to be shared with others? If it’s just for you—this will probably include all manuscript CPBs—then it’s a ‘personal use’ or just ‘personal’ CPB. If it’s meant to share with others, I call it a ‘printed’ CPB, since that’s what people who study CPBs call them, due to the fact that they were mass produced for public use after the invention of the printing press—though I should probably call them ‘public’ CPBs.

Commonplaces

Finally we have the actual ‘commonplaces’ or headings, which will give us the last 2 kinds of CPBs. If you organize your quotations under ‘commonplaces’ which are more general headings or tags like ‘justice’, ‘freedom’, ‘wealth’, ‘mind’, ‘love’, etc., then… well I don’t really have a name picked out yet, maybe we can just call them ‘category’ CPBs or ‘organized’ CPBs? It’s awkward because commonplaces are what made CPBs unique and now their more optional—we can’t call them commonplace CPBs, that’s terrible. If you have a better name than ‘category’ CPB or ‘tagged’ or ‘organized’ let me know in the comments. The alternative kind of CPB is the free-ballin’ CPB—no general headings or tags, categories or commonplaces to help you navigate the CPB, just quotes tossed in, though maybe you still include a specific title a the top, like “C.S. Lewis, Devil Kills Frogs”. Maybe we could tall these titled CPBs if you’re using titles and uncategorized CPBs if not.

Mix and Match

So, now with those 8 categories in hand, you can mix and match to find the best CPBs for you. Maybe you want a CPB dedicated to wise sayings, so the scope is limited; you want it to be a storehouse just for quotes, so it’s a treasury CPB; you are going to share it with others, so it’s a printed CPB (or public?); and maybe since the scope is limited to wise sayings, you don’t feel the need to add categories to each entry, so it’s an uncategorized (free-ballin’) CPB.

You’ve got yourself an uncategorized, printed, topic-specific, treasury commonplace book of wisdom. And that’s exactly what this digital commonplace book, Sayings of the Sages is. Is that too much analysis? Yes. I can’t help myself, even though I know the ancient Fremen saying “truth suffers from too much analysis.”

Some of you will have enjoyed that. If you did, consider becoming a paid subscriber and help support my work. To those others who hated all that above, you’ll love the wise sayings collected below and it will make up for that arduous digression.

Sayings of the Sages pt. 3

States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers. 
-Plato, the Republic

We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard.
-Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 30/320 (Penguin Classics, pg. 7) 

Fame is so sweet that we love anything with which we connect it, even death. 
-Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 37/158 (Penguin Classics, pg. 8)