I think maybe it's a universal human instinct to write down inspirational thoughts and sayings - I've certainly done it myself, though I've never had the patience or the handwriting to collect them all in one book! I find it very touching to think that past generations did the same thing. I agree that some of the things people used to find inspirational now sound sanctimonious and over-the-top to us (besides - I'm sure we'd see a difference between Mary Bennet's and Elizabeth Bennet's commonplace books!) but who knows what our favourite sayings will sound like in a hundred years' time? To be fair to the writer, I always understood that such books were a place to collect *others'* writings, not to compose original work of one's own - that's what a diary was for.