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March 19.
Here is a beautiful thought of Nicole’s: “the last degree of weakness allowed us is to ask God for deliverance from ills.” That is entirely stoic.
King, pontiff, and teacher in his own house.
March 20.
Equity, equality. Are the soul and body of one another. One is body; let us apply it to material things. Let us apply the other to moral and political things. Let us use each in a manner conforming to its nature and properties. (Equality must be established in weights and measures, equity in inheritances.)
Equity is proportional equality.
March 21.
Mirabeau. Took the columns away from the throne so as to support it alone.
The two doctrines: those of towns and those of the fields.
That there must be excessive people.
He brought into the world a new feeling not known before.
To coin one’s thoughts so as to give them currency.
March 22.
There are words that stand to others as genus to species or as species to genus. For example, to pound, to press; to pound is a way of pressing: it is genus, to press is species. For there are several ways of pressing. Words that are species have a vaguer, ampler sense. They have breadth and float loosely. That is why they better suit a very noble style. Genus words better suit a concise style. They press the meaning, squeeze it and fit themselves to it, cling to it. It is a garment for use, a close-fitting coat. The others are toga and cloak, robe or tunic of decorum, dignity, and display.
God. — ...he destroys it or changes it, but one must say this only to good people.
Error, you say? But no errors are more errors than those that offend physics, in which falsehood is in some sense palpable. Yet you allow them. Your language authorizes them, and they are really innocent. Do you not say every day, and perhaps even think, that “fire drinks moisture”? This way of speaking and thinking is convenient, necessary, universal, and yet it is an error in the sense you give that word.
What should be called error. Error is not a simple deception, but a dogma, a doctrine that moves and that deceives us about the existence, about the nature of some principal essence.
March 23.
Mr. de Buffon. Displays his plumage. He is the peacock.
March 26.
When one has read Mr. de Buffon, one believes oneself learned. When one has read Rousseau, one believes oneself virtuous. Yet one is neither for that reason.