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April 5.
I like to see two truths at once. Every good comparison gives the mind this advantage.
The function of writers should almost be confined to bringing into fashion the truths of all times, the love and practice of which are essentially necessary to the happiness of humankind.
One should mingle with historical narratives only such reflections as a judicious reader’s intelligence would not suffice to suggest to him.
The passions whose object is subsistence turn one away from the voluptuous ones.
Antiquity. One sees it only through cracks. One sees it imperceptibly.
[April 5].
Antiquity. Can still be known through those of its works that remain to us. One sees it there only through cracks. Yet one discovers it there
[April 6].
April 6.
Perhaps, indeed, that action harmed no one. But it was certain that leaving it unpunished was disastrous.
Space is the road of souls separated from bodies. They pass through it to reach the infinite. This road is always traveled, at every hour, every minute, every instant. And at every millionth part of every instant, some soul detaches itself from some body and goes to its new destination. The poets who, in epic poetry, represent a perpetual communication open between earth and heaven and maintained by beings intermediate between men and gods have merely imagined and confusedly painted the world’s true state in what is most worthy of being known and most hidden from our eyes.
April 7.
J.-J. had a voluptuous mind.
Plutarch. Minds that swim and float.
April 8.
An honorable man, he said, must never separate himself from his wife so far as never to be the first to speak of her when she is absent.
... Its necessity proves its existence irrefutably.