August 27.

Voltaire. When he had discovered, before anyone else, the gait natural to the French mind.

The French are young people all their lives.

In politics, philosophy teaches how opinions outside itself can be used for men’s happiness. Its own insufficiency is one of the first truths it perceives, and one of the most important.

August 29.

Condorcet. Human perfectibility. Not to discover its extent is to be shortsighted. Not to perceive its limits is a failure of judgment.

August 31.

For fear (at least filial fear) is a feeling that wins love for the one who feels it.

A man who has often seen a thing, when he wishes to see it again with pleasure, instinctively takes along someone who has not seen it.

In Tacitus’s narratives there is an interest in the story that will not let one read little, and a depth, a grandeur of expression that will not let one read much. The mind is as if divided between the curiosity that carries it along and the attention that holds it back. It feels some fatigue.

If you wish to give men a virtue, first give them a passion... [one illegible line.]

Envy wishes to bring down, emulation to equal. The one grieves at success; the other aspires to it. The former is jealous of every merit; the latter is ambitious for it.

September 3.

To avoid coarse words.—Coarse words and grand words.

Pretty as an apple...

September 5.

All devouring animals love not only prey but the hunt, which is their game, their amusement, their pleasure, their pastime. Indeed, all hunt merrily and laughing, so to speak.

Whenever dues remain payable longer than the memory of the grant can last in people’s minds, they always seem unjust, oppressive, and tyrannical. To prevent this difficulty, only dues for a fixed term should be allowed.