Sayings of the Sages | Pt. 2 of A Commonplace Book of Wisdom

Sharing the Wise Sayings I've Gleaned with You

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Proverbs 13:20

You’ve stumbled onto the second installment of my printed commonplace book, my Pocket Proverbs. Back in the day, people would create commonplace books for personal use—which included self-study, but also included bringing back precious quotes to share with their friends and family that they gleaned from massively expensive leather-bound books, which almost no one could afford. But Philosophers, theologians, scientists, poets, and other thinky-type folks would also collate beneficial quotations into a commonplace meant for public consumption. They would have these commonplace books, on a particular science or theological theme or collected poems etc., printed up, mass produced, and sold in book stores. This second tradition of CPBs is largely dead, even while the first tradition is enjoying a massive boom today.

I’m bringing back the printed commonplace book and I’m doing it right here on Substack! You’re about to read the second installment. So, if you want to go back to the beginning then check out this post here:

But you can also start here at the second installment because this printed commonplace book is my Pocket Proverbs CPB and one of the beautiful things about wise sayings is that they’re isolated units that don’t need a broader context in order for you to understand their meanings. They pop you right between the eyes, or prick you right in the heart, or kick you in the pants from out of nowhere—like a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky.

So, this is a paid post. If you want to read the collected sayings, you gotta pay the piper. I’m your wisdom dealer and I’ve got what chu need. But I will give my free subscribers a little free value as well—I always try to give you a little something even on my paid posts because no one likes to get a fun alert and then get smacked with a paywall right away. So, let me give you my working definition of a CPB and link some resources to help you get started in creating your own pocket proverbs CPB and then I’ll share the second installment of wise sayings.

If you like my work please consider becoming a paid subscriber, it really helps me put out more and better stuff, justify this kind of work to myself and my wife, and buy diapers and dog food for my dependents. Thanks!

Okay, here we go.

I’ve been collecting sententiae, wise sayings, for a long time. I used to find them solely in the old theology books I was reading but as grew more interested in philosophy, I started finding them there as well. Then I got back into fiction, mostly science fiction and fantasy, and I found even more there! Eventually, I started finding and collecting wise sayings from a very diverse swath of media: books, movies, TV shows, sermons, podcasts, blogs, fiction, non-fiction, cartoons, comics—all over.

So, I made a dedicated commonplace book just for sententiae, which I call my Pocket Proverbs Commonplace Book of Wisdom—or just Pocket Proverbs for short. This post is the second installment of my entries in my Pocket Proverbs CPB. It’s called Pocket Proverbs because the CPB is a pocket notebook—specifically, it’s a Leuchtturm1917 a6 in their limited-edition gold color (wisdom is worth more than gold). And it’s called Pocket Proverbs because I couldn’t help but use the alliteration even though the book consists of much more than proverbs— it also includes adages, aphorisms, riddles, epigrams, dictums, and probably other forms of gnomic statements and sayings.

It’s a commonplace book, which I define as:

Commonplace Book (CPB) = def. a collection 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.

This is my working definition of a CPB but I think, if it’s not there yet, it’s getting pretty close to being the real thing.

In coming up with this definition, I’ve had Aristotle’s genus-differentia scheme in mind. The genus being the family of the thing we’re trying to define and the differentiae being the things which help us differentiate between different family members. I’ve included them all in my definition. The genus is the CPB generally, which is a collection of quotations, usually kept in a notebook. The differentiae are ‘scope’ and ‘purpose’.

The scope of the CPB will set it apart from its fellows. Is it a general CPB which collects quotes from where ever on whatever topic? Or is it a topic-specific CPB which collects quotes only from a given topic? Both are beneficial for different reasons.

The purpose of the CPB will likewise set it apart from its fellows. Is it meant as a storehouse of quotations for you to come back and reflect on and maybe pull from and share quotes from? Or is it meant to be a place where you annotate, mark up, exegete, and add your own thoughts to right there on the page? That is, are you manuscripting out your thoughts on the quotes you’ve collected?

So with these two differentiae of ‘scope’ and ‘purpose’ we end up with 4 types of commonplace book:

General Treasury CPB – a storehouse of quotes from all genres and topics.

General Manuscript CPB – a collection of quotes from all genres and topics which you add your own thoughts to.

Topic-Specific Treasury CPB – a storehouse of quotes on one particular topic, e.g. Economics, Justice, Superman, Philosophy of Mind, Christology, Cats, C.S. Lewis, Preaching, etc.

Topic-Specific Manuscript CPB – a collection of quotes on a particular topic which you add your own thoughts to.

Okay, so there you have it. The four kinds of CPBs based on the differentiae of ‘scope’ and ‘purpose’. If you follow my ParkNotes YouTube channel then you’re probably sick of seeing those but I have to keep talking about them because people continue to tell me how helpful the categories are.

Now, I haven’t talked about the ‘commonplaces’ or headings that have traditionally been the reason we’ve called them commonplace books. But I just wrote a piece on commonplaces and I came up with three different ways that you can go about generating them for a new CPB or adding them to an existing CPB, so if you want to learn more about ‘commonplaces’ or the tags/headings/titles inherent in commonplace books since Quintilian, check out my earlier post on 3 ways to go about making them in this post here:

You can also watch my latest ParkNotes video on how to make your own Pocket Proverbs CPB of Wisdom here:

Now let’s get on with installment #2 of my printed topic-specific treasury commonplace book, Pocket Proverbs CPB of Wisdom. This installment has a ton of C.S. Lewis quotes from his more obscure essays as well as lots of Pythagorean sententiae. You’re going to love it!

Pocket Proverbs – Vol. 2

There Seems no explanation of mind that does not presuppose mind. -William Desmond, “On the Betrayals of Reverence, Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. 65, issue 3.

…materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself. -Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (found in the Epistemological Skyhook, Jim Slagle, pg. 136).

Of making many books there is no end, and much studying is a weariness of the flesh. Ecclesiastes 12:12