A guide to keeping the words you love
What Is a Commonplace Book? How to Keep One on Your iPhone
A commonplace book is a notebook of the lines worth keeping: quotes, passages from books, verses, sayings, and your own thoughts, gathered so you can find them again. Readers have kept them for centuries, and they work just as well on a phone.
Whatever is well said by anyone is mine.
What is a commonplace book?
The name comes from the Latin loci communes, “common places”: the headings, like courage or friendship, under which a reader filed what they found. Renaissance schools taught students to keep one, and many writers, scholars, and statesmen kept them for life. In 1706, an English translation of John Locke’s method for indexing a commonplace book was published, so that its owner could find any entry quickly.
What makes it a commonplace book, rather than a diary, is that it collects. Most of it is other people’s words, chosen by you, with your own notes and lines mixed in.
Commonplace book, journal, or Zettelkasten?
- A journal records your days. It’s organized by date and mostly in your own words.
- A commonplace book keeps what you read and want to remember. It’s organized by theme, and it’s made to be reread.
- A Zettelkasten is a system of linked notes for developing ideas, usually toward writing. It’s more about your thinking than about the words themselves.
What to put in one
- Quotes and passages that stopped you while reading.
- Bible verses or lines from other sacred texts.
- Sayings from people you know, and things your grandmother used to say.
- Your own sentences, when you finally say something the way you meant it.
- Where each one came from: the author and, if you can, the book or occasion.
How to keep one
- Capture it when it happens. The line you meant to write down later is the one you lose.
- Write down who said it. An unattributed quote is hard to trust and harder to use.
- Sort by theme, not by date. You’ll go looking for something on patience, not for what you read in March.
- Reread it. A commonplace book is only as useful as the times you open it. Give it a regular moment: the morning, or a Sunday.
- Add your own words. Over the years, your lines sitting among the great ones become a record of what shaped you.
Paper or digital?
Paper is slow in a good way: copying a line by hand makes you read it closely. A digital commonplace book is always with you, can be searched in seconds, can’t be lost in a move, and can bring old entries back to you without your having to open it. Many people keep both.
Keeping a digital commonplace book on iPhone
- Apple Notes is free and already on your phone. It works well for a simple list, but it has no place for an author or source, and nothing brings old notes back to you.
- Notion or Obsidian can be shaped into almost anything, if you’re happy to build and maintain the structure yourself.
- Well Said is built for quotes. Every entry has its author, and your library holds quotes, Bible verses, and your own words together. You can search, filter, and sort it, it works offline and stays in sync across iPhone and iPad, and widgets and notifications bring your saved quotes back to you through the day.
Well Said doesn’t scan book pages or import Kindle highlights. You save quotes from the app with one tap, or type a line and its author in yourself. If you’re looking for something to add, Well Said can also find quotes for any moment you describe.
Well Said is free to try. The Library widget, notifications from your library, and unlimited writing come with a subscription.