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Certainly, at that moment Dacier’s mind held a strong infusion and a vivid tincture of Plutarch.
Few men are worthy of experience. Most let themselves be corrupted by it.
March 22.
Auream mediocritatem, “gilded mediocrity.” This means mediocrity dressed up, adorned.
March 25.
In every kind of work of taste and genius, form is the essential part, and content is only an accessory.
That is not a gentle air: it is more an air of self-satisfaction. Nor is it a polite air; it is more a civilized air.
Riches. Necessary. And how could I not think necessary what is inevitable?
In 1752, the Protestant theologians headed by Vernet of Geneva consulted some French scholars on the question “whether it would be fitting to use tu (instead of the singular vous) in a version of the Bible then being prepared.” Fontenelle and Montesquieu were consulted. (See Mémoires pour servir à la vie de Fontenelle, p. 159.)
Tu in place of vous introduces into our language an oddity so little odd and a confusion that causes so little difficulty that, from their earliest years, children habitually use this tu and find their way without any hesitation through all the difficulties with which its applications seem to make our language bristle. They observe its rules very well, without any reflection and as though by instinct. This singular tu, moreover, essentially incorporated into our modern languages by the practice all good writers have followed in this respect to this day, this singular tu, I say, is a true richness for the moderns. With it, one more shade and one more color have entered our languages.
A tragedy in prose is an opera without music or a theater without an orchestra.
All rules in painting, poetry, music, and even dance performed as a spectacle tend, and can tend, only to give the mind pleasure and spare it fatigue.
A government made solely for reasoners.
These figures, you say, are Oriental.—Granted. But man is too. He is Oriental everywhere.
Common education. To have received only the education common to all other men is a great advantage for those who are superior to them, because they are more like them.