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Their tongue deceives their ear, and their ear their mind. The pathos of their voices, in lamenting feigned misfortunes, causes them real suffering.
November 5.
An idle river that carries nothing.
They grow drunk on the vapor of the wine they pour, and their own lie deceives them.
Wine makes them furious.
For it is impossible to handle affairs without soiling oneself with greed.
“Those who had died in the bosom of France over the past hundred and fifty years had easily been able to foresee what fates they were leaving behind them. The future then was born from the present with ease, in a regular and familiar succession. But in the time whose customs and events we are tracing, everything was surprising, unheard of, and none of the dead could have feared or hoped for what was seen.”
“Woe to countries where treasures lie buried.”
People say of this or that custom that it is Greek, Roman, or barbarian, and I say that it is human, and that men think of it and invent it wherever they need it.
When, in a nation, the poor and the rich, the ignorant and the learned, the villages and the towns do not have the same beliefs, a change must necessarily take place in the opinions of the villages, the ignorant, and the poor.
In what they call the peroration, the mind seems to stop, consider, and recapitulate, to see whether it might have omitted anything.
History is good to forget; that is why it is good to know.
Imitate time. It destroys everything slowly. It undermines, wears away, uproots, detaches, and does not tear out.
In their words one hears the ringing of their brains.
Among the Persians, the only teachers were men invested with dignity.