Our loves and our aversions are two great springs that providence uses.

April 6.

Usefulness is the manifestation of the truth contained in an opinion where we do not know how, and often cannot even manage, to see it. 2. Clarity in an opinion is the visible manifestation of truth. Usefulness is its palpable manifestation.

Usefulness is a fruit of truth. Often the tree is hidden, but its fruit reveals it.

But in abandoning these religions, does it not seem to you that philosophy has plundered them? Yet that it has taken from them only what they had that was black and somber, that is, human and thick. Hence these meditations on tombs, on ruins... And observe that these sorts of books have readers because minds once accustomed by priests to this kind of impression readily return to that part of their earliest habits from which pride estranges them, but to which nature leads them back despite themselves. We like Capuchin preachments, but we want them philosophical. The consoling part, which is their essence, could not be stolen from them because it is indeed inseparable from them. It has, as it were, evaporated amid profaning hands. Composed of lights and mists, it is their mists that have been taken from them. The coarse act only coarsely.

A Capuchin’s Capuchin preachments are in their place, like a Harlequin’s harlequinades.

He made the moon to rule over the waters as the sun rules over the air. Thus the imagination has rightly called the first of these planets a moist and cold heavenly body.

April 10.

When we reflect, folds, unfoldings, and refoldings physically form in our organs and [go] as far as puckering if the reflection is deep.

Psalms. Read them with the intention of praying and you will find them beautiful. Ah! does not every reading require a disposition of mind that [is] suited and even adapted to it?

What does it matter that these opinions and words are coarse if, proportioned to the coarseness of human intelligence, they suffice to produce in men’s souls the most beautiful and most delicate of all feelings—I mean piety? We are only mud, and yet this mud governs the world.—God’s instruments must be judged by their work, not their material. If they never miss their mark, what does it matter whether they are made of iron or earth?

When nature has made a thing finished and complete in every point (a work for which the secondary productive force suffices), God or spirit intervenes, and it is he who attaches the charm. He veils himself in all things, but so as to let himself be glimpsed, neither hidden nor visible.

April 11.

There is this difference between this art (religion) and all the others. In all the others, what pleases the wise must please the public; in this one, on the contrary, what has pleased the public must please the wise.

April 13, Holy Thursday.

Note that what makes worship useful is its public character, its outward manifestation as striking as possible, its noise, its pomp, its clamor, and its observance universally and visibly insinuated into every detail of public and private life. This alone creates the festivals, the seasons, and the true variety of the year. Thus one must boldly say that bells, abstinence from meat, the eating of meat, etc., were profoundly wise institutions and useful, important, necessary, indispensable things.

When there is a solemn observance, for as long as it lasts, it must in some sense be this observance (that is, its ceremonies) that governs the hours, rather than the course of the sun. During that time its object must influence even men’s moods more than the temperature does. In a word, the character of the day must feel its effects and its color be tinted by it.

April 22.

Not to soil the purity of the air, that is, to forbid oneself licentious words. Do not crumple the air, or do not grind the air, that is, do not utter words proper to anger.

A mind playing in floods of light where it perceives nothing, but where it is penetrated by joy and clarity...