Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.
March 17.
Nature has wisely provided that plants useless to men’s pleasures, but necessary to the universe, may subsist without cultivation.
All that is best scarcely lasts.
March 19.
Polybius (the historian) carrying (in a magnificent urn) the ashes of Philopoemen from defeated Messene to avenged Megalopolis.
Attention (on the listener’s part) serves as accompaniment in the music of discourse.
Minds that never rest are subject to many wanderings.
The good is better than the better.
What makes civil wars more murderous than others is that one more readily resigns oneself to having one’s enemy as a contemporary than as a neighbor; it is that one does not want to risk keeping vengeance so close.
An empire must (he tells him) resemble a perfect animal that has wings to fly (cavalry), fins to swim (ships), feet to pursue and hands to seize (a good army), and intelligence to choose and decide (learned men and prudent men).
May.
Freedom to come and go. Safety, cleanliness, convenience, and pleasantness of roads, necessary to its exercise.
October 8.
This laughter deceives reason. Intellectual hellebore. A burst of laughter has dispelled all these spells, disconcerted illusion, discomfited imposture, disabused credulity.
You will make men mockers.
And make men dissatisfied with everything that is not virtue.
He armed him with a sly laugh.
November 2, 1793. At Villeneuve le Roi. Saturday.
Oil flowing over marble [offers] the image of a character impervious to the gentleness of persuasion.