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September 13.
To live without a sky...
O fortunatos nimium. If they have neither poverty nor vice.
Of vices. Their harmfulness is more palpable in the man of the fields; consider them there. Of virtues: their usefulness shines more brightly in the cultivated man.
To reason, to argue. It is to walk on crutches in the search for truth. The penetrating man reaches it in a leap. One must use reasoning to make sure one is at the goal and has traveled the whole way. Thus, in the stadium, the runner touches the stone with his hands and turns to see the barrier at the goal.
These false rules serve only to persuade those who observe them that they have attained what they cannot attain.
The mind has been misdirected...
I would not like (he said) to have as guests people who would not be better off in my house than in their own (if they are my neighbors) or at the inn (if they are traveling).
September 16.
Among the three expanses, one must count time, space, and silence. Space is within time; silence is within space.
September 24, 1798.
Appearance of the moon and return from Bussy.
...that without the religious world the sensible world presents a desolating enigma. Compensation for all ills, for pains, for poverty, for reverses, for unjust disgrace, for old age and death, and finally for the whole of life and the spectacle of the earth, through the sole idea of Δ [God].
Hence resignation, submission, humility, the pleasures of piety, finally the hope of [ ] and a glimpse, through enthusiasm, of a better and perfect world.
To be in one’s place, to be at one’s rank, to be at one’s post, to be in order, to be content. Not to murmur at suffering, to be unable to be unhappy.
September 26.
Reason suffices to make one moderate, but holiness alone can make one chaste.
September 30.
To talk too much (they say). Nota bene: to write too much.
October 1.
Architects of words, masons of words. — All the rubble stones, all the pieces. They are not numbered. They are mixed among one another. Some cannot be seen. One must search and match.
If it does not please him to foresee, so as to leave us free...
It is impossible to love the same person twice.
October ….
Aristotle. — To begin with things known (or acknowledged). It might perhaps be better to begin with those that are true and felt.