In jest, we say only part of what we think; we consider only certain sides of our subject. Hence a brief, broken style is natural to this disposition. It is also natural to wide-ranging minds that, seeing far and much, wish to say little. It comes to them by nature; and it comes by necessity to those who, mindful of memory, wish what they are about to say to enter it easily.

What that king of Ethiopia said of the Persians and their gifts; and that indeed our fabrics lie to us through their colors, and our perfumes through their scents.

Of the style that brings us back into ourselves.

Method (μετα-οδος) = (quasi via). Path. But if the path is badly made, badly directed, it would be better to strike out across the fields.

Descartes and the cross-eyed. That this taste was that of a well-organized man, and why.

The world hatched from the idea of God. The idea was like its egg, and indeed, like a true germ, it contains the features or lineaments.

August 28.

Words like so many little wheels.

Germs come from the idea of God, which is their principle.

Pascal. His plan is dramatic. In it he made use of the circular and the Platonic contour.

A work such that, to conceive it, it was not too much, and to conceive it and carry it out together, too little, the genius of a single man.

Flowers. [They] bear their perfumes as trees bear their fruits.

August 29.

How much, in the works where all his genius unfolded, J.-J. Rousseau suddenly swelled his voice and raised his tone. — Indeed, one can say there is voice in his writings, as there is warmth.