Dear Diary: Orders just gone round that there are to be no lights after dark...

August 11, 1806

Being anxious to overtake Captain Clark, who from the appearance of his camps could be at no great distance before me, we set out early and proceeded with all possible expedition . . . My wounds (accidental gunshot from the day before) felt very stiff and sore this morning but gave me no considerable pain. There was much less inflammation than I had reason to apprehend there would be. I had, last evening, applied a poultice of Peruvian barks. At 1p.m. I overtook Captain Clark and party and had the pleasure of finding them all well. As writing in my present situation is extremely painful to me, I shall desist until I recover, and leave my friend Captain Clark the continuation of our journal.

~Captain Meriwether Lewis, from The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Dear Diary: Life of a wife and mother sometimes very wearing...

August, 1850

I get very little time to write or think; for my working days have begun, and when school is over Anna wants me; so I have no quiet. I think a little solitude every day is good for me. In the quiet I see my faults, and try to mend them; but, deary me, I don't get on at all.

~Louisa May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott: her life, letters, and journals, edited by Ednah D. Cheney

Dear Diary: I can shed tears as I please—no one's looking...

July 10, 1919

In Venice, when we were on the way to stay with my mother-in-law, we bought some pipes. I said to her on arrival: 'Madame--' (she calls me Liane and I call her Madame, because I can hardly in decency say 'mother' to a woman scarcely ten years older than I am) -- 'Madame, I must confess to a vice: I smoke a pipe.' I wanted to test her a little. She looked at me with raised eyebrows and pursed lips, then said: 'So much the better. I much prefer the smell of a pipe to that of cigarettes.' The pipe stayed in my suitcase.

~Liane de Pougy, My Blue Notebooks: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan

Dear Diary: Yesterday I went to the Titanic enquiry...

May 16, 1772

Last Wednesday Bet Smith was set upon the gallows. She behav'd with great impudence. Thursday I danc'd a minuet & country dances at school, after which I drank tea with aunt Storer. Today I am somewhat out of sorts, a little sick at my stomach.

~ Anna Green Winslow, age 10, from The Diary of Anna Green Winslow, a Boston Girl

Dear Diary: A French sailor kissed Mummy and changed hats with her...

May 1, 1872
Wrote another sketch for the Independent: "A French Wedding," and the events of my travels paid my winter's expenses. All is fish that comes to the literary net. Goethe puts his joys and sorrows into poems; I turn my adventures into bread and butter.

~ Louisa May Alcott, from Louisa May Alcott: her life, letters, and journals, edited by Ednah Cheney

Dear Diary: I vow I will not move one step, unless carried away...

April 15, 1820

On the 15th fell the first shower of rain we had seen for six months, and on the 17th the thermometer rose to 77° in the shade. The whole face of the country was deluged by the melted snow. All the nameless heaps of dirt, accumulated in the winter, now floated over the very thresholds, and the long-imprisoned scents dilated into vapours so penetrating, that no retreat was any security from them. The flood descended into the cellar below our house, and destroyed a quantity of powder and tea; a loss irreparable in our situation. The noise made by the frogs which this inundation produced, is almost incredible. There is strong reason to believe that they outlive the severity of winter. They have often been found frozen and revived by warmth, nor is it possible that the multitude which incessantly filled our ears with its discordant notes could have been matured in two or three days.

~Captain John Franklin, from Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, Volume One

Dear Diary: Importance of shorter hair for women in present crisis...

April 4, 1841

Paper on Boulders & Till of South America.— finished April 4th.— Was idle & unwell—sorted papers on Species theory.

-- Charles Darwin, from Personal Journal

Dear Diary: They will then perhaps believe I am not crazy...

March 15, 1806

We were visited this afternoon, in a canoe 4 feet 2 inches wide, by Delashelwilt, a Chinook chief, his wife, and six women of his nation, which the Old Bawd, his wife, had brought for market. This was the same party which had communicated the venereal to several of our party in November last, and of which they have fully recovered. I therefore gave the men a particular charge with respect to them, which they promised me to observe.

-- Captain William Clark, from The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Dear Diary: I had so many nice things to say...

March 8, 1918

Going up in the lift at Holborn the other day I stood next to a boy of fourteen or so, whose head only was visible among the crowd. I noticed that it was an extremely interesting, sensitive, clever, observant head; rather sharp, but independent looking. One couldn’t tell from his cap whether he was well off or not. I came to the conclusion that he was the son of an officer with whom he stood. When we got to the street I looked at once at his legs. His trousers had holes in them. From that one could judge what a wretched affair his life will be.

-- Virginia Woolf, from A Moment’s Liberty: the Shorter Diary, abridged and edited by Anne Olivier Bell