Private Musings Quotes

Like society, the diary is a world of useless secrets. Everything is there, yet there is nothing.

What are you thinking of so earnestly?" said he, as they walked back to the ballroom; "not of your partner, I hope, for, by that shake of the head, your meditations are not satisfactory." Catherine coloured, and said, "I was not thinking of anything." That is artful and deep, to be sure; but I had rather be told at once that you will not tell me." Well then, I will not." Thank you; for now we shall soon be acquainted, as I am authorized to tease you on this subject whenever we meet, and nothing in the world advances intimacy so much.

I hid myself within myself ... and quietly wrote down all my joys, sorrows and contempt in my diary.

Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

It’s lucky no one else knows what our most secret thoughts are. We’d all be seen for the cunning, self-aggrandizing fools we are.

I think your most intimate thoughts are only honest when they're in your head.

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy

Don't read my diary when I'm gone.

Our secret thoughts are rarely heard except in secret. No man knows what conscience is until he understands what solitude can teach him concerning it.

The cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

Lying on the front passenger seat, as if it didn't matter, was Rose's Diary. It Mattered.

It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity.

Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.

Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I? Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.

If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair.