Commonplace book

Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are personal notebooks used to compile any information the owner finds interesting or useful. They can variously contain notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and other professional references. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Entries are most often organized under systematic subject headings and differ functionally from journals or diaries, which are chronological and introspective.