He observes that plants “which receive their growth through the action of their mother resemble her much more than those that come from seed,” and that “tulips, for example, that come from Offsets are usually the same color as their mother,” whereas “those that come from seed are always very different from her.” Chaste experiments! innocent observations! very different, etc.

He says that “devotion is even more abstract than knowledge.” This is false, and it is no more true that the mind of man is more inclined to study than to piety.

“The traces of pleasures once tasted remain strongly imprinted in imagination; they continually awaken the ideas of sensible goods; they always excite importunate desires that trouble the mind’s peace; finally, they irritate concupiscence (or the need for pleasure) on every occasion, and it is a leaven that corrupts everything...” This austerity is very beautiful and very well justified.

May 30.

One says “an open countenance.” One could also say “a countenance shut in.” We say “a buttoned-up air.”

Death, a natural function and the last.

June […]ʳ.

I needed age to learn what I wished to know, and I would need youth to say well what I know.

June […].

To let oneself be bridled by oneself, that is to say, by one’s own opinions.

A false light for fictions, the light of torches in the theater.

This shadow of falsehood and truth (poetry).

That eternal life in which, lit by the same light and warmed by the same fire, we shall all resemble one another. But, placed here below for diverse destinations, we have diverse minds, and to wish to remove these differences or to be too wounded by them is to complain of order itself, to resist it and run counter to it. It is to mingle heaven and earth.

It is to shorten the life of man to the most decisive of all gauges and all measures, that of our opinion, a true standard in such a case.

Nota. That there are things which must serve as a measure for opinion, and others for which opinion is necessarily the only measure.

June […].

Ease is opposed to the sublime. Look at Cicero, he lacks nothing, except the obstacle and the leap.

The statues. The nakedness of the legs of the clothed Severus is unbecoming. The naked Marcus Aurelius is repellent. The Julian is true: he has indeed the countenance of a superstitious man, vain and pious, almost hypocritical, the air of a man who has a bad religion. The sarcophagus of the muses and the nereids: all that is by the worst sort of maker, a sculptor of parish and cemetery. The muse of philosophy conversing with Socrates: as the muse of history converses with Homer in the sarcophagus of the muses. The Hermaphrodite is, whatever they say, too slender to be voluptuous in its contours. There is not enough abundance; only the necessary is found in the flesh, and fire does not show itself there.