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March 21.
A word sometimes clarifies an entire subject.
Essences. They are eternal and eternally existent in the mind of God.
The centuries of atheism among the great and superstition among the peoples. Alexander VI, etc.
March 27.
If someone has two names, he should be called by the more beautiful, the sweeter, and the more sonorous.
March 28.
On the world known to the ancients. — That it seemed more proportionate to the reach of human intelligence. That the reason is that they knew better than we do how to view all things in a way that would subject them to their mind. That ours is still astonished by our new discoveries, and instead of freeing it from this affectation, we affect a kind of eloquence apt to strengthen that astonishment in us more and more. That instead of enlarging our thoughts, we enlarge their objects, presenting the extraordinary and seeking to strike the eyes. That instead of raising our mind above the world and all things, we raise all things above our mind. That we make ourselves dwarfs to show giants, and shrink ourselves to make our conceptions more colossal. That the mind must dominate everything, and that as long as it is dominated, it is because it has placed itself badly.
One would say that the weight of their subject crushes their thought.
— For having added a cubit to space, the weight of a loaf to the weight of the world.
— A few leagues more or less in extent, a few numbers added to the known number of portions of matter, a little more bulk in its volume: must these weary the mind, repel it, and obscure its sight?...
My vapors stop at my stomach.
March 30.
Truth consists in having the same idea of something that God has of it.
All other languages can translate Hebrew, but Hebrew can translate no language.
Voltaire speaks much of theological pride and its outbursts. But what of his own? The ambition to dominate through one’s political, philosophical, or theological opinions drives ardent men to the same excesses and the same furies. This ambition is the cruelest when it is extreme, because (it can subjugate only through death) those whom it cannot persuade resist it and oppose it as long as they can think, that is, as long as they live.
March 31.
There are not only innate ideas, but immediate truths, which we feel without mediation, without any intermediary.
Who lacks the spirit of his age Has all the misfortunes of his age. (Volt.)
and one must have not only the spirit of one’s age, but also the spirit of one’s fortune and one’s health.