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July 12.
The whole earthly part of their mind is worn away. Only its heavenly and immortal part survives and still makes itself felt.
July 17.
On countries whose aspects make one imagine many things one does not see there; and on those that give a taste for variety more than others do.
Love serves marriages, anger serves war, greed commerce, pride command; emulation leads to effort, gluttony to [ ], and laziness makes one peaceful. Wisdom does all this, and better still.
They take art for nature.
July 18.
I want neither a mind without light nor a mind without a blindfold. One must know how to blind oneself bravely for the happiness of life.
July 22.
How almsgiving is debased (or How almsgiving came to be debased).
Those who feel respect always have some model before their eyes. For respect is always produced by the idea of some perfection believed to exist in the object of that feeling.
August 17.
On times when there is a public opinion.
August 19.
We must distinguish two things in him: his designs, of which we are blind instruments, and his commandments, whose observance is free and meritorious. We fulfill the former through our existence, of which he is the master; we practice the latter through our will.
We have ideas only through abstraction, that is, by separating natures from existences or individuals, much as our modern painters, with the help of a mordant, separate a painting from its canvas. It is not so with God. His ideas are what existed first; our realities are only a concretion of them.
August 22.
The soul is a cabinet of ideas. The notions we have of things (or of their qualities) are there like medallions or identifying descriptions that we consult in all our judgments.
August 26.
There is in the soul a delicate part and a subtle curiosity. It must be given nourishment. — It predominates in some, is subordinate in others, but exists in all minds, which exercise it on different matters according to the century.