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The soul of Bossuet himself was a soul in childhood.
Kant. His mind is only a poorly trimmed lamp. He glimpses.
January […]0.
— Before the expression that flees and that the mind seeks to seize. — If it presented itself at once, constantly, with fixity, we would use it composedly, tranquilly, and coldly. — We do not seek only the expression suited to the object, but also the one suited to the impression this object makes on us and to the disposition in which it puts us.
January 22.
Mr. de Bonald. — An unhealthy man, then, would not have a constitution in keeping with God’s will. But why not?
To hear you, it would seem that no state perishes except through a defect in its constitution. Yet a well-constituted state can be destroyed by a thousand external causes.
If a certain other idea follows from an idea,—very well,—for those who hold it! But even if a certain other word followed from a word, what would it matter, at bottom, to those who have said it or who let it be said without attaching much importance to it?
January 18.
How all harmony is in memory, or results from the union or disunion established between sounds through recollections. By themselves they succeed one another, but do not hold together. It is memory that binds them; our ear makes chords of them.
January 4.
See how tiresomely Locke repeats himself.
January 12.
Descartes. What he says of the meshes of the brain. — Indeed, they did not know them; but by giving them names, they made others believe, and persuaded themselves, that they knew them.
Descartes. Had he made with his hands and with wood machines as beautiful as those he made with his speech and thought, he would unquestionably have been the greatest maker of automata in the world. His man and his world are a machine world and a machine man. He was not too materialist, but too much a mechanician.
January 14.
It is not so much the philosophy as the philosopher that one must admire in Descartes.
In all his writings Voltaire has only a single constant character, that of a mocker of men and books.
January 15.
[Descartes.] It is not surprising that this philosophy did not last. It demands too much strain of the mind and does not give enough exercise to the imagination at liberty.
February 1.
Piety is a remedy.
History should be above all the painting of a time, the portrait of an era. When it confines itself to being the portrait of a man or the painting of a life, it is only half history.