JOURNALS AND INSPIRING QUOTATIONS

Artist Book by Margo Klass. Click here to see Margo's website

I've been collecting inspiring quotations since my school days, often scribbling them down on scraps of paper and later writing them out neatly into my quote journal. There's something very empowering about the words of others especially when they mirror one's own thoughts. So often I just can't put into words what I am feeling and when I find a quotation that expresses these thoughts clearly, it's very satisfying.

Leatherbound journals by Teo Studio. See Teo's Etsy shop here.

Journal by Teo Studio. See Etsy Shop here.

Emerson began writing a journal at about 15 and in it he wrote his thoughts, experiences and quotes from the books that impressed him.

"Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
__ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another journal by Teo Studio. See Teo's blog here.

I have found beautiful handmade journals and artist books on the web, all of which would make wonderful quote "bibles".

Miniature Journal by Teo Studio

If you feel like sharing your favourite quotes I would love to read them.

Leather notebooks and journals by Scaramanga. See more here.

One of my many favourite quotes is by Nigerian writer, Ben Okri ......

"We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected."

Journal by Bridgette Guerzon Mills. See more at amonobooks here.

Journals by Bridgette Guerzon Mills at amanobooks.


Journal by Luthien Thye. See more at Luthien's blog, here.

Artist book by Kathleen Amt. See Kathleen's Flickr photo stream here.

Embroidered Notebooks by Heather Shaw. See Heather's Etsy Shop here.

Journals by Elizabeth Bunsen. See blog here and shop here.

A LITTLE TASTE OF AFRICA

Nothing says Africa to me quite like the journals of the dishy Mr. Beard.
The beauty, the mystery, the cruelty, the blood and gore of Africa..... It's all there, between the pages of the most exciting journals of our time.

"When you look at his diaries, you think, The man is mad!" - Iman

"The diary habit began back when Beard and Radziwill were lovers and Jacqueline Onassis gave him a leather-bound journal he proceeded to fill with all manner of debris. Year by year, the diaries piled up, overstuffed volumes grotesquely swollen with the detritus of a life, each page densely layered with photographs and an astonishing assortment of other items: tiny rodent skulls, candy-bar wrappers, keys, buttons, flamingo feathers, a pocket from a pair of velvet jeans, peanut shells, dried leaves, plastic cocktail stirrers, a piece of a cereal box, mysterious newspaper headlines (woman saved from slime!), bones and rocks, smears and dribbles of blood (always Beard's favorite artistic medium), intricate line drawings and elaborately inscribed quotations, cigarette butts, rubber gloves, matchbooks, fish skeletons, plastic ketchup packets, a desiccated lizard, a dung-beetle foot—the variety is endless." - quote from an article in Vanity Fair, about Peter Beard, here. It's well worth reading! Beard is quite a spicy character whose story is bound to be made into a blockbuster film one day...... Maybe it's been done already?

"A giraffe is so much a lady that one refrains from thinking of her legs, but remembers her as floating over the plains in long garbs, draperies of morning mist and mirage." - Karen Blixen

All the images are from Peter Beard, a boxed, double volume set by Taschen. I used the kuba cloth as a back drop ( in case you thought it was part of the journal:-)

Visit Peter Beard's website here.