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Of those who write late; and of those who write rarely, with difficulty. It seems that Ennius wrote late, Sallust rarely, Tacitus with difficulty. Pliny the Younger has only one of those facilities that one can easily acquire when one writes early and often. Thucydides late and rarely.
Misfortune. Men must be trained even more to pity it than to bear it.
He has set the ship of State afloat again, but he has not brought it into port.—He has set France afloat again, but he has not brought her into port.—The latter sentence could be said in conversation, and the first could not. Why.—1° The metaphor is shorter in the second, its sound briefer, the thought presents itself with less pretension. The ship of State offers an emphatic unfolding and gives the sentence an amplitude, etc. Besides, etc. the slowness etc. It is extreme liveliness that allows metaphors to pass, even in a circle, among friends, tête-à-tête, and what am I saying? in conversation with oneself.
In the first case, I lengthen my sentence as though I wished to reach distant ears. In the second case, I draw it in because the person to whom I speak is near. Besides, I do with words as a writer what I do mechanically with the voice.
Constitutions (true). Have been, are, will always be, and can only be daughters of time. Man can no more make them by his will alone than one can make an animal... A society is not a being; but it follows all a being’s laws in its formation and in [its] developments.
March […].
Of the operation of the mind that consists in believing. That: it is the only one of which all men are capable,—consisting only in receiving, etc.
Wit when feigned.
It is even easier to be mistaken about the true than about the beautiful.
To be judged good, style must stand out from the paper, so to speak, as the colors and figures stand out from a good painting.
Great selectiveness in thoughts, as great abundance in feelings.
A good and wise statesman must leave no portion of humankind without government (through his own fault).
In Buffon, a prayer for peace; an empty prayer (metaphysical). It is not religious. The heart alone must pray.
Ancients. When everything in their institutions materialized them, they were spiritualists through their poetry, not through its dogmas, but through its beauties.