Diary Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old diary quotes, diary sayings, and diary proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

The life of every person is like a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another. James Matthew Barrie
When all is said and done, leading a good life is more important than keeping a good diary. Anonymous
A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love. Lawrence Durrell
History is the diary of humankind; to forget it is to try to navigate the future with no memory of the past. T.L. Rese
Making records should be fun. Noel Gallagher
Keep a diary, and someday it'll keep you. Mae West
Write a diary, imagining that you are trying to make an old person jealous. Joe Dunthorne
To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit. Enoch Powell
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. E.L. Doctorow
A journal should be neither an echo nor a pander. George William Curtis
Keeping a journal implies hope. Erica Jong
You may be keeping a diary of your thoughts but know that, in every religion, the God you believe is keeping a diary of your actions. Steve Maraboli
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. Oscar Wilde
Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. Douglas Pagels
One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer. Franz Kafka
Some of what you write may be humdrum dates and places, but there will also be rich passages that will be quoted by your posterity. Spencer W. Kimball
A diary is an assassin's cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen. William Soutar
Everyone should have a form of a diary, it's a great release. Stanley Victor Paskavich
A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light. Wallace Stevens
All records are made to be broken. Red Auerbach
Keeping a diary is like closing your bedroom door and refusing to come out until dinnertime: it is a declaration of self. Caitlin Flanagan
A great library contains the diary of the human race. Rev. George Dawson
A proper family diary with everyone's events and parties in it really helps organise the household. Anthea Turner
Oh, this is a dear diary moment. Matthew Perry
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. Pablo Picasso
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterward. Robert A. Heinlein
Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile a stain upon the silence. Samuel Beckett
The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden. John Robert Fowles
A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one's movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation. A. C. Benson
As we live longer and healthier for longer, we need to keep ourselves busy the diary is pretty full. Evelyn Glennie
It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time. Tallulah Bankhead
I never travel without my diary; one should always have something sensational to read in the train. Oscar Wilde
She is so sure of getting her own way, she could even write her diary in advance. Evan Esar
The evolution of a new diary: double entry, single entry, blank. Evan Esar
Wars take longer nowadays because generals spend most of their time keeping diaries for future books. Evan Esar
Some people are such liars, they cannot even tell the truth in a diary. Evan Esar
One always forgets the most important things, it's the things one can't remember that stay with you. Alan Bennett
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going. Tennessee Williams
I'm not good at future planning. I don't plan at all. I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. I don't have a day planner and I don't have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future. Heath Ledger
Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Anne Frank
Paper has more patience than people. Anne Frank
Although diaries have often been dismissed as simplistic or artless of more 'highbrow' literary dgenres, in fact, dairies posses their own complexities. Desirée Henderson
Great. All I need is for some jerk to catch me carrying this book around and get the wrong idea. Jeff Kinney
A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said. Desirée Henderson
The charm of the journal must consist in a certain greeness, though fresh, and not in maturity. Desirée Henderson
Diaries are so multifaceted that every broad claim made about the genre within these pages should be understood to be provisional and will not apply to all diaries. Desirée Henderson
The diary is considered to be one of the the most significant literary expressions of this new, modern individual. Desirée Henderson
Diary is of a basically private nature and that it should not be published. Bronislaw Malinowski
For such a diary to have meaning and impact, literary skill may be less effective than vanity, and a kind of brutal frankness is essential. Bronislaw Malinowski
A diary is the ordinary sense can be a simple chronological record of day-to-day events. Bronislaw Malinowski
A diary is a book. You write down how you felt or what you thought about the things that happened. Anita Ganeri
People keep diaries to help them remember what happened. Anita Ganeri
The diary exists at the margin of literature, and most diarists would label themselves as authors. Philippe Lejeune
Although the diary is often taken to be a spontaneous expression of individuality, it is in fact a cultural practice that has a history. Philippe Lejeune
Diary writing is necessarily discontinuous, a matter of stringing together disconnected entries. nd yet they are related to each other by rhythms of repetition and variation that may not be obvious. Philippe Lejeune
The diary is a wager on the future. It bases the individual.. on ipseity, a sort of abstract commitment to remain faithful to oneself. Philippe Lejeune
Dairies are records of a life process rather than finished narratives about a life, and as such they are only part of the practice of narrating and understanding what a life means. Philippe Lejeune
Diaries remain a means of expressing oneself in writing, and its creation is based on the culture or the community at that historical moment. Angela R. Hooks
The diary has become a dialogue with history and that history has been reconstructed within the pages of the journal written. Angela R. Hooks
Whatever your life, it is urging you to record it--to embrace the crumbs with the cake. It's why so many of us want to write memoir. Natalie Goldberg
We have turned so fulllheartedly to the memoir form. We have an intuition that it can save us. Writing is the act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect. Natalie Goldberg