Journaling Quotes

If life is envisioned as a continuously running motion picture, the keeping of a notebook stops the action and allows a meaningful scene to be explored frame by frame. ~ Jo Coudert

Journaling is the difference between learning and remembering. It's also the difference between forgetting and fulfilling our goals. ~ Mark Batterson

Journaling is something that I've always tried to get into. ~ Kris Allen

Journaling can be an excellent way to increase self-awareness, discover and change habits. ~ Akiroq Brost

Journaling is the single most effective tool you may ever find for deeper intimacy with Father God and Jesus. It is a heart-to-heart method of communication with God. For you see, it is God's desire to intimately commune with you and to have you intimately commune with Him. Journaling facilitates this heart-to-heart communion - it is simply listening to each other's heart and writing it down.
Journaling helps you hear God's voice. God is speaking to you most of the time. Often you do not differentiate His voice from your own thoughts and therefore do not realize you are actually hearing God's voice. If you can learn to clearly discern His voice speaking within you, you have found the font of intimacy - the heart of God speaking to you. ~ Linda Boone

With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write. ~ Alanis Morissette

We're slammed at work and busy at home. Throw in an occasional outing with friends or significant others, and we're ready for bed at 10:00 PM every night. Really ready for bed. There's barely enough time in a day to cover all our mandatory obligations, so optional activities like novel writing, journaling, painting or playing music
things that feel great but no one will ever take us to task for shirking
are invariably left for another day.
Which is how most of us become 'one day' novelists. As in, 'One day, I'd really like to write a novel.' The problem is that that day never seems to come, and so we're stuck. ~ Chris Baty

Self-reflection is so healthy. Journaling works for me - when I record the details of what I'm going through, whether it's a relationship issue or negative thoughts, I can look back and see how far I've come. It makes me proud to see my progress and how I got through a bad situation. ~ Kelly Rowland

Heart-to-heart journaling is a dialogue with God where both you and God are talking and you are recording it on paper. Heart-to-heart journaling is simply writing out your thoughts to God and what you sense to be His answer or response to you. ~ Linda Boone

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we've thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth. ~ Rob Bignell, Editor

Loneliness of heart
In the still of the night my heart doth cry out, who can hear it for time is far spent. In the darkness in the shadow of the depth I find isolation and fear ... ~ M.I. Ghostwriter

James W. Pennebaker and his associates at the University of Texas have conducted extensive research on the benefits of journaling. His findings: if you want relief, write about your most upsetting experiences, write through the pain, and connect painful events with your life story. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it. ~ David Sedaris

My journal is my life's companion. ~ Christina Baldwin

The best time to begin keeping a journal is whenever you decide to. ~ Hannah Hinchman

It may sound lame, but I've been journaling since I was in third grade. I love it! It makes me feel calm and happy. ~ Brittany Snow

In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. ~ Susan Sontag

If I can only write my memoir once, how do I edit it? ~ S. Kelley Harrell

I am glad to be with you and treat your weakness tenderly. ~ E. James Wilder

What happens to us is not as important as the meaning we assign to it. Journaling helps sort this out. ~ Michael Hyatt

If you haven't been journaling through this, now is a good time to start. One day, you and people who love and loved you and people who will never know you may want to look back to understand how you survived. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

Let's end the notion that ideas have no value unless they turn into a business or have some other practical use. Save them all in a beautiful book like Leonardo did. You might want to give them away someday, perhaps to someone who needs an idea. Or your great-great-grandchildren might love knowing what a fascinating mind you had. Or your biographer might be very happy after you're gone. ~ Barbara Sher

Title: Teaching Writing Based on Journaling Concepts of Thoreau Thesis: Information processing generates active students. My thesis is to engage in remembering place. Through my own experience of basing my newest novel entitled The Passing Light on my own travel diary, I create strategies based on the travel journaling of Thoreau. My students create E- journals as primary sources for essays. Writing based on keen observation and self discovery is a part of learning to write. ~ Maryann Diedwardo

Mesh what is with what you desire in your mindset journaling, the Universe doesn't know the difference. ~ Jaclyn Johnston

I haven't kept a diary since I was seventeen. I think it was soon after my baccalaureat that I gave it up for reasons I'm not sure of, because from the age of twelve or thirteen I had written one religiously... They were a record of what I had done when, down to the nearest minute. I think I held on to them as 'evidence' of some kind. They helped me to find my place in the world and, in a broader sense, to prove to myself that I really existed. I suppose I must have decided at some point that I no longer needed to do that, because I gave up writing a diary, stopped telling the story of my life and tried to just live it instead. ~ Antoine Laurain

Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are. ~ Carolyn V. Hamilton

I wanted to write in my journal but couldn't bring myself to. There are so many shades to what passed through me in those days. And I would shrink from committing myself to paper because the light would change before the word was out, the ink was dry. ~ Audre Lorde

Journaling is a way to be a good steward of the Spirit's illuminations. ~ John Piper

And there's my poor endeavoring human desk at which I sit so often during the day, facing south, the papers and pencils and the coffee cup with sprigs of alpine fir and a weird orchid of the heights wiltable in one day– My Beechnut gum, my tobacco pouch, dusts, pitiful pulp magazines I have to read, view south to all those snowy majesties– The waiting is long.

On Starvation Ridge
little sticks
Are trying to grow. ~ Jack Kerouac

Journaling has become one of the most gratifying and fulfilling practices of my life. Not only do I derive the daily benefits of consciously directing my thoughts and putting them in writing, but even more powerful are those I have gained from reviewing my journals. ~ Hal Elrod

These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Journal what you love, what you hate, what's in your head, what's important. Journaling organizes your thoughts; allows you to see things in a concrete way that otherwise you might not see. Focus on what you think you need to find in your art. ~ Kay WalkingStick

I'm also big on journaling. You can write in the sand or on a watermelon or whatever suits you, but the key is to get it out of your head and out of your heart and down your arms and into something, a keyboard or piece of paper. ~ Deborah King

Journaling is one of the most overlooked and undervalued spiritual disciplines. In my estimation, it's on a par with praying, fasting, and meditating. It's the way we document what God is doing in our lives. ~ Mark Batterson

What fun it is to generalize in the privacy of a note book. It is as I imagine waltzing on ice might be. A great delicious sweep in one direction, taking you your full strength, and then with no trouble at all, an equally delicious sweep in the opposite direction. My note book does not help me think, but it eases my crabbed heart. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

A few italics really do relieve your feelings. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

He captures memories because if he forgets them, it's as though they didn't happen. ~ Donald Miller

The young John Quincy Adams begins it lifelong habit of keeping a journal with reluctance that he might one day have to read it. He hopes, though, that the flaws in his earlier entries will be balanced by the progress he is able to see. ~ Paul C. Nagel

I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn't say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren't many. ~ Kimberly Novosel

Journal writing gives us insights into who we are, who we were, and who we can become. ~ Sandra Marinella

A good journal entry- like a good song, or sketch, or photograph- ought to break up the habitual and life away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world. ~ Anthony Doerr

Keeping a journal: The short entries are often as dry as instant tea. Writing them down is like pouring hot water over them to release their aroma. ~ Ernst Junger

The pages afforded glimpses into my soul where I'd hidden it, behind masks of paper and ink. ~ Rachel L. Schade

The people that surround us mirror who we are. ~ Rob Martin

True intimacy - sharing who you are, the very deepest part of you - with Him. God wants to listen to who you are. ~ Linda Boone

You can tell it any way you want, he said, you can be I or he or she or we or they or you and you won't be lying, though you might be telling two stories at once. ~ China Mieville

Like Willow, we all can honor our pain and then move toward something more joyful. We can focus on our resilience and remember our joys or sorrows. We can craft stories that tell us we are loved, strong, resilient, respected, worthy, generous, forgiven, and happy. We all have such stories if only we can uncover them....

To rewrite our story, we need effort and imagination. We can access imagination by journaling, painting, music, or art. One of my favorite things about writing is that I get to tell a second story about whatever happens to me. And, in this second story I can shape events in ways that are more beautiful and happiness-producing. Indeed, what is all art if not an attempt to tell a better story?

Some of our stories bring out the best in us, whereas others induce despair, fear or anger. We can ask ourselves questions that remind us of our kindness, hard work, and strength over the years. We can explore our uncelebrated virtues and our survival skills. ~ Mary Pipher

....and on occasion I like to write in pencil, because I need to know that I can erase the words, even if I never do. ~ Bruce Black

Not for a moment did he consider keeping a journal. He would never allow anyone to read his private thoughts; therefore, he did not risk writing them down. "I'd rather take it to my grave," he said. And anyway, when was a journal ever honest? "It either tells a lot of truths to cover a single lie, " he said, "or a lot of lies to cover a single truth. ~ Michael Finkel

The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. ~ Virginia Woolf

If you truly desire intimacy with your Father and Jesus, you must be willing to do what is the very heart of intimacy: share who you really are with Him - all your innermost thoughts and feelings. ~ Linda Boone

This is the age," she explained to me once as we walked home from school, "when we're the purest forms of ourselves we'll ever be. We haven't been complicated by everything yet. I want to keep a clear record of who I am, so that down the road I'll be able to see who I was. Maybe I can avoid losing myself completely."

She sighed, biting her lip pensively. "Things happen," she said. "Small things and large things, and they just keep changing you, little by little, until there's no trace of who you used to be. If I get lost, this journal will be like a record of who I was, a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back. ~ Jonathan Tropper

I began realizing it was okay to just sit with Him instead of always reading and journaling prayers or hustling off to the next bible study. It was okay to just be still. It was possible to find Him in the immense stillness, the hidden parts of my heart. He was always there in my hiddenness. ~ Natalie Brenner

Most of us have developed a fairly extensive vocabulary for describing pain, as though the journal were a doctor requiring much detail to make the correct diagnosis. The roundness of the spiritual journey cannot be expressed without developing an equally extensive vocabulary for talking to ourselves and others about the nature of wonder, joy, ecstasy, love, transfiguration. ~ Christina Baldwin

Want to know one of the most rewarding and holistic ways to heal & make significant life choices that will fully align? Learning to slow down, breath, think, journal, talk, and process before reacting. Knowing you have worked through the issue, be it mentally, emotionally or spiritually, before taking action lets you write the script of your life how you want. Which in turn gives you the best chance of achieving your dreams ~ Natasha Potter

Journaling Tips

-Try to write every day. Set aside a special time--perhaps right before you go to bed--to reflect on what happened during that day. Writing things down soon after they happen will help you to be honest and objective. If you wait, you may not remember the details as well, and maladaptive thinking patterns may cloud your interpretations.

-Record the date and time for every entry. Also, give each entry a title that reflects what you wrote about. This will help when you search for old entries about a particular day or topic.

-Don't worry about spelling, grammar, and punctuation, or organization. Being a perfectionist will lead to frustration. You aren't going to be graded on your journal--just write whatever comes to mind.

-Leave blank space for future comments. Reflecting on entries weeks, months, or even years after you wrote them will help you record your progress.

-Keep the journal in a safe place. Journal writing is most effective when you are completely honest. This may be hard if you are afraid your parents or siblings might read it. ~ Heather Moehn

When you choose to write using yourself as the source of the story, you are choosing to confront all the silences in which your story has been protectively wrapped. Your job as a writer is to respectfully, determinedly, free the story from the silences and free yourself from both. ~ Christina Baldwin

He said, You'll write it not because there's no possibility it'll be found but because it costs too much to not write it. ~ China Mieville

Who we are and where we want to go determines what we do now and what we accomplish over time. ~ Jimmy Tomczak

It's a way of clearing the palate. Kids come into the classroom with all this other stuff in their hands. If they write it down for 10 minutes they become much more available for whatever it is we want to do in the class. ~ Joan Countryman

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. ~ Christina Baldwin

We dig holes for ourselves, of comfortable living, and it's hard to see just how deep down you are until you suddenly want to take a look at the world up there, some fresh air
and realise you can't get up. You're too far down. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Visual journaling allows us to access our inner language of imagery and express it both verbally and visually, while exploring the connection between image and word. ~ Michael Bell

If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to. ~ Richard Rohr

Exploring the thought process through visual journaling is essential in a world that is in continuous change. ~ Michael Bell

My creative workday starts with strong breakfast tea and a few minutes of journaling, both of which help me get my head in the story. So much of story-building for me involves immersing myself in the character and situation I'll be working on, just the way an actor does when playing a role. ~ Therese Fowler

Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself. ~ Susan Sontag

I want him pissed off at politicians, ill at ease, trying to manipulate me into doing favors for him I would do anyway. I want him looking for his glasses, trying not to come, doing the dumb verb of journaling, getting spinach caught between canine and gum, berating my logorrhea, or my not staying mum. I don't want him at peace. ~ Karen Green

The women cannot go out except to go to church or to the bullfight, and even that is unusual. I consider it a very ugly custom, and if I couldn't go out as I wished, I would leave this country [Spain], if only because of that one custom of the inhabitants. ~ Anais Nin

I resolved to start journaling every day, and so far I've been journaling every day, and it's been great. ~ Charlie Worsham

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one's own experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a little, at least, in one's own life, and a personal, trivial immortality of an old self assured. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I write awe-thoughts flowing in my mind. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

To make time for art, you have to believe that it's possible to make time for art. ~ L.K. Ludwig

Blessed is he who keeps daily diary and compares the work of this week with that of the last, for he will realize God quickly! ~ Swami Sivananda Saraswati

My daily routine varies, but there are certain things I try to stick to, like journaling in the morning and establishing my mood before I check any social media or take any calls or e-mails. That helps get me started on the right foot. ~ Xosha Roquemore

You must remember that your story matters. What you write has the power to save a life, sometimes that life is your own. ~ Stalina Goodwin

This is what you do when you journal. You are recording God's grand, epoch-spanning redemptive story as it unfolds in your limited, temporal sphere of existence here on earth. Your journal has the potential to record the continuation of the Holy Spirit's work in our world! ~ Adam L. Feldman