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October 12.
To say duty is to say necessity. And that is why, for both, we say one must. One must be just; one must die.
Repentance effaces the fault, that is to say, it makes one cease to be guilty. But it does not efface the punishment, or the necessity of being punished. We always are punished when we have done wrong.
... and when you give actors such poems, you make them blow into an instrument that is not hollow.
October 25.
Some have their full mind only when they are in good humor, and others only when they are sad.
October 26.
It is not my sentence I polish, but my idea.
November 1.
False enthusiasm and bad taste born of fashionable physics. Bad taste consists in loving what is not lovable, and false enthusiasm in taking fire for what naturally neither kindles nor moves.
Saturday, November 3.
Minds that are eagles without feathers, without wings.
November 5.
In books, we find eloquent not only everything that increases our passions, but also everything that increases our opinions.
November 10.
Yes, the language of exaggeration has more brilliant and more sonorous words. Exactitude and precision are far less harmonious.
Yes, the world is made of gauze, and even of clear gauze. Newton calculated that diamond had [...] times more voids than solid parts, and diamond is the most compact of bodies.
November 19.
Severity. In a sense freezes our faults and fixes them. Often indulgence makes them die. A good approver is as necessary as a good corrector.
November 21.
Malebranche has many expressions that are felicitous for him, that is to say, extremely suited to expressing his particular doctrine; but he has none or few of those expressions that are felicitous for everyone, that is to say, suited to expressing what everyone feels and is compelled to think when reflecting.