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Molière and R... preached the same morality. See Chrysale in The Learned Women.
January 11.
Printing, then, must be as free as the apothecary’s trade. Neither more nor less.
These coups d’état, you tell me, are necessary. I reply: what is ruinous and criminal is at no time necessary.
One writes with a pen, the other with a paintbrush.
January 12.
For the perfect sharing of all things, it is also necessary that one and the same bed, etc.
2. Children always want to look behind mirrors.
3. Phlegm, bile, and blood in our bodies; water, fire, and air in the earth.
January 13.
I would readily say of certain books by certain authors — If that is not his style (that is, his strength, his elevation, his precision, his enthusiasm), it is at least his writing (that is, his idiom, his language, his original and accustomed character). — As with Corneille in his epistle to Ariste. Every author, if he is great, has his own words, his particular grammar, his pronunciations, as it were, his manner, his tics, his manias.
Imitate the woman spinning. Imitate the ant. One gathers in summer what is needed in winter, and the other prepares in winter what is needed in summer.
Quickness. Agility of mind. Such works are only somersaults.
January 15.
It is a great truth that there are invincible errors one must never attack.
January 16.
Dreams. Their lantern is magic.
Ibid.
Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says to his own must inspire one or the other in them.
Note. Huet estimated that the number of books known in Europe in his time amounted to three hundred thousand. (See Olivet, article on Leclerc.)