Sayings of the Sages | Pt. 1 of A Commonplace Book of Wisdom

How to Keep a Commonplace Book of Sententiae + Some of The Best I've Collected Thus Far

How much better to get wisdom than gold! To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. Proverbs 16:16

I’ve been collecting sententiae, roughly ‘wise sayings’, in commonplace books for a long time—something like 12 years! The practice of physically recording sayings that I find particularly sagacious is rewarding in and of itself, but it also helps me process the sayings and make them apart of me. On top of that, once I’ve written it down, I can go back and reflect on it at will.

It’s such a simple practice, with such a low bar for entry, and it yields such a high return on investment but so few actively do it. Just get yourself a notebook and start collecting wise sayings. Reflect back on them. Share them with friends and family. Enrich your life and theirs.

While I’ve been practicing this style of commonplace booking for a long time, a few years ago I decided I should start bringing my favorite sententiae, my favorite sententious maxims, gnomic statements, aphorisms, epigrams, adages, etc., around with me so that when I’m tempted to pull out my phone and ignite that infinite scroll, I can choose to reach for a pocket full of wisdom instead. So, I started keeping what I call my Pocket Proverbs commonplace book of wisdom. It’s just a dotted golden Leuchtturm1917 A6 pocket notebook with a vertical line five dots in from the distal edge of the page to mark out citations from quotations. That’s it.

I haven’t included any actually commonplaces (or headings) in this commonplace book and that’s partly because the sententiae are short enough to stand on their own; partly because this is a topic-specific treasury commonplace book, meaning I know the topic of the notebook is “wisdom” so they’d all have that same general tag or commonplace; and partly because I don’t want to ‘efficiently’ search the commonplace book.

Here’s how I carry it with me. This is a Norman Cahn Horween cover from his shop on Etsy.

People often ask about quote retrieval. How do you find the right one? Well, that’s normally where commonplaces come in to serve as tags to help you sort—along with the theme of the commonplace book, e.g. I know a quote on artificial intelligence is coming to be in my commonplace book by that name. But when it comes to my Pocket Proverbs CPB, I’m not interested in efficiency. I want to thumb through these wise sayings and refresh them in my mind. I want to take time to ruminate on them. I want to be reminded of other sayings even as I look for one in particular. I use this pocket notebook to replace mindless scrolling so it’s actually beneficial for me to forego adding more commonplaces which would help me navigate the book. With that said, I can navigate it very easily when I want to because I’ve become super well acquainted with it over time.

So, with all this said, I want to encourage you to start your own pocket proverbs commonplace books and I want to share mine with you. I snapped up a bunch of these LT1917 special edition golden A6’s for me to fill in over the rest of my life. As I fill in more and more sententiae I will sporadically share them with my paid subscribers here on Substack and I’ll record video read throughs as well, here on Substack as well as for paid subscribers on YouTube (for Parker’s Pensées and ParkNotes), and on my respective Patreon pages too (Parker’s Pensées and ParkNotes).

I collect wise sayings from where ever I find them. Literally! So you’ll see lots of quotes from science fiction and fantasy novels, from the Star Wars: the Clone Wars TV show, Batman the Animated Series, from podcasts, from dictionaries and encyclopedias of proverbs, from the Bible and ancient philosophers, from Kung Fu Panda, and lots of other random places. If it has the ring of truth to it, I’m collecting it!

For the video read through of the first fourth of my Pocket Proverbs CPB, check out this post here:

And I’ll also be picking out particular wise sayings and covering them more in-depth on my podcast, Proverb Peddling, which you can watch on YouTube here

Or listen on Spotify

Why only for paid subscribers? Well, I hate typing up quotes but I really love sharing them. So, sharing them with paid subscribers motivates me to do the menial task with enthusiasm and I want to bless all of you who help keep the lights on. Thank you so much! And if you enjoy my stuff and want to support your boy, please consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack and unlock paid posts like this one.

Okay, here’s the first of many installments of wise sayings from my Pocket Proverbs commonplace book to help you jump start your own commonplace books of wisdom: