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May 30.
The customary expression “divine thoughts, divine feelings,” etc. (The day before, convers., with Mme M.-B. — in the study.)
June 2.
Those letters in which one sees that the writer is as busy speaking to himself as to others. In writing, one must say only what those one writes to may care to know. In correspondence, it is not the repose and satisfaction of one’s own mind that one must consider, but the satisfaction and repose of another’s.
June 4.
Ink and paper should not be used like air and the voice. We must not force those who cannot flee us to listen to us too long. Some people seek much more to explain their thought than to make it understood. Yet making it understood is enough. Instead of speaking, they compose. Those are bad letters. There are, however, occasions when an air of care, attention, and even studied preparation may be fitting...
May 18.
Religious men, speak only religiously. Do not step outside your sphere, do not leave your element. Anthée could be suffocated as soon as he lost touch with the earth. You, on the contrary, are overcome as soon as you leave heaven.
We use for the passions the fabric given us for happiness.
June 12.
On the necessity of reforming ideas in order to reform judgments.
Thursday, June 13.
My soul inhabits a place through which the passions have passed, and I have known them all.
Sound (in its beauties) seems a thing midway between silence and noise.
The arts that join hands and lend one another support.
At the museum. The finish of the Dutch. Rubens’s colors.
June 15.
Lions, bulls; images of strength everywhere, while those of wisdom are nowhere.
June 25.
Their genius is to un-teach people.
June 26.
He gives his body over to pleasure, but does not give his soul over to it.
Thursday, June 31.
Art is another nature, which people have made. I call it nature because it is always being made; wherever there are people, they paint, they sing, they build.