Montesquieu is capable of going astray, Daguesseau is not. Thus men of great character are more capable of faults than others who are more perfect, but less bold, less elevated, less great.

March 7.

These sentences are cenotaphs, or empty tombs. Looking full to the eye, they sound hollow to the mind. There is not enough meaning in them. A false cube, loaded dice.—Certain forms of sentence require a great fullness of meaning. The cube suits the solid, gives the idea of it: if the solid is missing, there is a lie. The sententious turn, if the maxim is missing and is not inside... like Toinette in The Imaginary Invalid, pretends to speak and says nothing.

Attention wasted, expectation deceived and a claim without right, the effort where one cannot reach...

Style that grips and takes nothing. Who grips too much embraces poorly, says a proverb, and: who squeezes too much and holds nothing.

Nothing in the world is worse than a mediocre work that pretends to be excellent.

All writers who have in their minds what we call originality (or, as Brk [Berkeley] said, who “write with their temperament”) corrupt taste, unless the public knows well, and from the writers themselves, that they must not be imitated. Let us therefore proclaim it loudly, frankly, generously, without self-interest.

March 9.

And unknown truth serves as a rule for our judgments, just as the beauty we cannot see serves, without our knowing it, as a model for the beauty we express.

There is always some fashion in literary tastes and judgments.

March 10.

Voltaire. His first judges judged him better. Through his influence and the passage of time, this man has taken reason from men, or at least the severity of reason. He has corrupted the air of the age. He has given his taste even to his enemies, his judgments to his critics.

That one must often pass through the subtle to rise and reach the sublime, just as one must pass through the clouds to reach the heavens. If, then, one uses the subtle (or the fine-spun) only as a path to reach somewhere else and true realities, it must be admitted. But if one wished to stop there and had no other goal, it would have to be forbidden. That is to say, it must be admitted as a path and forbidden as a goal.

March 11.

“Genius (says Dupaty) comes through irritation.” Yes, his.

March 12.

Ancient history, that mirror in which we like to see the present time represented.

March 17.

Fleeting accessories often serve to impress solid objects on our memory, just as a sound, a song, an accent, a voice, a smell engrave forever in our minds the memory of certain places, because these light things made our pleasure or our boredom there.

March 18.

For in the soul, [not] everything is the soul, and in God not everything is he.

March 20.

Yes. If thought can exist outside the mind as speech can exist outside the mouth.