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October 23.
... oneself in praiseworthy dispositions and one’s possessions in good condition.
October 24.
The question “whether divorce is useful or not” is the same in morality as this one would be in politics: “Is it useful for a state to be able to repudiate its governments whenever it pleases?” But, it will be said, the public will is difficult or even impossible to ascertain, whereas etc.
October 27.
Accountable for their actions — But, as for me — and it is for my thoughts that I will give account.
October 28.
Religion binds powerfully to the dead.
Could virtue be to society what health is to each of us? and could its worth be known only after it was lost?
Beautiful works. Genius begins them, but labor alone completes them.
November 4.
This light shines enough to show us where we are going, but not enough to know where we are passing and where we are.
November 5.
On the unhappy need to be pleased with oneself.
November […].
Two kinds of eloquence. That which tends to communicate our enthusiasms and that which tends to communicate our passions. In the one, everything aims at repose and light; in the other, everything tends, on the contrary, toward ardor and movement.
November […]0.
What does it matter, indeed, whether ideas are innate or not, if we have them inevitably and almost as soon as the first notions (notions common to everyone) that serve, we are told, as their origin and materials?
On adoption (Débats, 3 Brumaire, Year 10). “And adoption, with whatever glamour it is surrounded, is in my eyes nothing but an insolent parody of fatherhood.” This custom first had its origin in savage and warlike life.
November […].
Everything that seems false to me does not exist for me. For my mind, it is a nothingness that offers it no hold. Thus I could not combat it, refute it, except by likening it to something that exists and reasoning by some path of comparison.