To understand Plato and bear with him, the words used to translate him would have to have for us the ambiguous sense his own had for the readers and listeners of his time.

October 19.

Arrival of Bonaparte.

Are they capable? Yes, but they are not respected.

That God loves even the wicked themselves.

October 20.

Rousseau places the rule of our duties in the depths of our conscience. This is to take as a measure what is most diverse, most shifting, and most uneven in the world. One man’s conscience is not always the same as another’s, nor always the same as itself.

In old age, our worth lies only in qualities of reflection. We keep them despite age because it is perpetually in our interest to have them.

The ancients. We have more decided opinions. Our reasoning is firmer and less subtle, our assertions bolder. But otherwise we have neither a different nor a better philosophy than theirs.

October 21.

...like regret, which is the salt of absence and of the image...

October 22.

But what, in fact, is my art? What name distinguishes this art from the others? What end does it seek? What does it produce? What does it bring to birth and into existence? What am I aiming at, and what do I want to accomplish by practicing it?

Is it simply to write and make sure I am read? The sole ambition of so many people! Is that all I want? Am I merely a polymath? Or do I have a body of ideas that can readily be identified, whose nature and character, merit and usefulness, can be determined?

This is what I must examine closely, at length, and until I know.

2 o’clock.

Correct the mind’s habit of wandering. (And yet without chaining or constraining it.)

October 23.

...who said to experience: you are in your dotage; to time past: you are a child.

Children are well cared for only by their mothers, and men only by their wives.

October 28.

— On destructive power...