31 Inspirational Diary Quotes
Nov. 23, 2024, 2:45 a.m.
In a world where words hold the power to uplift and inspire, diaries serve as personal sanctuaries for our thoughts and dreams. Whether you're jotting down daily reflections or capturing fleeting moments of creativity, the right words can transform a blank page into a source of motivation and reassurance. This curated collection of 31 inspirational diary quotes offers just that—each quote a gentle nudge towards clarity, inspiration, and self-discovery. Whether you're seeking solace in solitude or looking to ignite a spark of creativity, let these words guide and inspire your journey through the pages of your own story.
1. “ The following year the house was substantially remodeled, and the conservatory removed. As the walls of the now crumbling wall were being torn down, one of the workmen chanced upon a small leatherbound book that had apparently been concealed behind a loose brick or in a crevice in the wall. By this time Emily Dickinson was a household name in Amherst. It happened that this carpenter was a lover of poetry- and hers in particular- and when he opened the little book and realized that that he had found her diary, he was “seized with a violent trembling,” as he later told his grandson. Both electrified and terrified by the discovery, he hid the book in his lunch bucket until the workday ended and then took it home. He told himself that after he had read and savored every page, he would turn the diary over to someone who would know how to best share it with the public. But as he read, he fell more and more deeply under the poet’s spell and began to imagine that he was her confidant. He convinced himself that in his new role he was no longer obliged to give up the diary. Finally, having brushed away the light taps of conscience, he hid the book at the back of an oak chest in his bedroom, from which he would draw it out periodically over the course of the next sixty-four years until he had virtually memorized its contents. Even his family never knew of its existence. Shortly before his death in 1980 at the age of eighty-nine, the old man finally showed his most prized possession to his grandson (his only son having preceded him in death), confessing that his delight in it had always been tempered by a nagging guilt and asking that the young man now attempt to atone for his grandfather’s sin. The grandson, however, having inherited both the old man’s passion for poetry and his tendency towards paralysis of conscience, and he readily succumbed to the temptation to hold onto the diary indefinitely while trying to decide what ought to be done with it.” - Jamie Fuller
2. “Zoo-Wee Mama!” - Jeff Kinney
3. “Morning: Slept.Afternoon: Slept.Evening: Ate grass.Night: Ate grass. Decided grass is boring. Scratched. Hard to reach the itchy bits.Slept.” - Jackie French
4. “In chaos, there is fertility.” - Anais Nin
5. “You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you think are in code, or take notes on a series of events you may have observed that are suspicious, unfortunate, or very dull. Keep your commonplace book in a safe place, such as underneath your bed, or at a nearby dairy.” - Lemony Snicket
6. “For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means 'place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read.” - Lemony Snicket
7. “Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.” - Nikki Sixx
8. “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” - Pablo Picasso
9. “Advice to explorers everywhere: if you would like to recieve due credit for your discoveries, keep a detailed account of your journeys as Columbus did. On Septemeber 28, 1492, after four weeks at sea, he writes: Dear diary...I means journal. Yes, dear journal. That's what I meant to say. Whew. Anyway, we have yet to discover America, and the crew has become increasingly rebellious. I have decided to turn back if we have not spotted it by Columbus Day. Will write again later if not killed by crew. P.S. Last night's buffet was fabulous, the ice sculptures magnificent.” - Cuthbert Soup
10. “Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can.” - Douglas Pagels
11. “I don't have a diary, I don't write things into a diary. I imprint myself into the sky and when the sunlight shines brightly, I can stand under the sun's rays and everything I have imprinted of myself into the sky, I will begin to see again, feel again, remember. And when the wind begins to blow, it blows the details over my face, and I remember everything I left in the sky and see new things being born. I am unwritten.” - C. JoyBell C.
12. “It's a good thing most people bleed on the inside or this would be a gory, blood-smeared earth.” - Beatrice Sparks
13. “The saddest line you scraped in your diary was not that you cried but those moments when we both shared smile.” - Santosh Kalwar
14. “Joshie has always told Post Human Services Staff to keep a diary, to remember who we were because every moment, our brains and synapses are being rebuilt and rewired with maddening disregard for our personalities, so that each year, each month, each day, we transfer into a different person, an utterly unfaithful iteration of our original selves, of the drooling kid in the sandbox. But not me. I am still a facsimile of my early childhood. I am still looking for a loving dad to lift me up and brush the sand off my ass and to hear English, calm and hurtless, fall off his lips.” - Gary Shteyngart
15. “It's an odd idea for someone like me to keep a diary; not only because I have never done so before, but because it seems to me that neither I - nor for that matter anyone else - will be interested in the unbosomings of a thirteen-year-old school girl.” - Anne Frank
16. “It (politician) wants to separate them. And to do so it has chosen the worst, blackest pencil of all - the pencil of war, which spells only misery and death.” - Zlata Filipovic
17. “He started keeping a journal — had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.” - Philip K. Dick
18. “All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities.” - Spalding Gray
19. “How do we know that our life really happened and that we are not simply accumulating details, making it all up as we go along?” - Rachel Klein
20. “Why should I be sad? Everyone has to die. If you have a body, it's too late to cry. It's only funerals I can't stand.” - Rachel Klein
21. “I laughed when I read about being born with two hearts, one of which is devoted only to destroying humanity.” - Rachel Klein
22. “DEAR DIARYYou are greater than the BibleAnd the Conference of the BirdsAnd the UpanishadsAll put togetherYou are more severeThan the ScripturesAnd Hammurabi’s CodeMore dangerous than Luther’s paperNailed to the Cathedral doorYou are sweeterThan the Song of SongsMightier by farThan the Epic of GilgameshAnd braverThan the Sagas of IcelandI bow my head in gratitudeTo the ones who give their livesTo keep the secretThe daily secretUnder lock and keyDear DiaryI mean no disrespectBut you are more sublimeThan any Sacred TextSometimes just a listOf my eventsIs holier than the Bill of RightsAnd more intense” - Leonard Cohen
23. “Please read my diary, look through my things and figure me out.” - Kurt Cobain
24. “What will become of me? I do not know where am I going or what tomorrow will bring.” - Hélène Berr
25. “Now that everybody thinks he looks a little Slavic, it annoys me. I don't want that to be the reason I find him charming. I found him charming for no reason, because he is who he is.” - Hélène Berr
26. “Who else but me is ever going to read these letters?” - Anne Frank
27. “Dear Diary,We flew to the other side of the world, and I never stopped holding you close to my chest. You were empty and so was I. My only friend in the world. The only one who understood where I began and where I was going. We flew together and everything we knew before was gone.” - Diane René Christian
28. “One minute you're closer to someone than anyone in the whole world, next minute they need only to say the words 'time apart', 'serious talk' or 'maybe you...' and you're never going to see them again and will have to spend the next six months having imaginary conversations in which they beg to come back, and bursting into tears at the sight of their toothbrush.” - Helen Fielding
29. “Issues are like tissues. You pull one out and another appears!” - Gary Goldstein
30. “I need to make myself strong on the inside instead of what is on the outside. I know all of this, but why can’t I put any of it into action? I guess that’s why I am in this place.” - Piper Caleb
31. “Maybe we choose to stay in a constant state of ignorance as a protective instinct — maybe I was just in denial. I just don’t get how you can be completely in love with someone one day, and then all of a sudden you just aren’t. I will never forget that day...the day where I became numb.” - Piper Caleb
