There was another trend back in the day, something like a bookmark/quotes book. You would write in this journal quotes and page numbers from books/poems that you liked so that you could refer to them later on. The nice thing is that by writing down the quote, you would also be more likely to remember it and the surrounding context. I read Byron's Don Juan and man, if I didn't write down a few quotes and page numbers I would have forgotten what happened in this epic story!