YEAR 1798

January 4.

The planets’ rotational movement is brought about by the action of the flame they contain.

January 6.

What is a diamond but a little luminous mud?

One may be miserly with words, but not miserly with syllables.

January 7.

Wit (good wit) is good sense sharpened.

The charlatan is one who, through affected cold judgment or affected bombast, seeks to raise the value of a thing, a person, or an opinion above the value he himself sets upon them.

There is a bombast that is cold, and another that is boiling. There is a deception carried out through transports one displays. There is another that attains its end by feigning reflection. Finally, there is a taciturn charlatanism, just as there is one that is fulsome, gesticulating, scatterbrained.

January 14.

In society we speak of what we touch upon. But in intimacy we speak of scarcely anything but what we explore deeply.

Distinguish errors from fables. Error lies in the results.

The old nurse. She rambles, but she gives good milk.

January 16.

“Peace to the dead.” (My brother’s words.)

January 20.

This maxim that “without scruple there is no continence.”

January 23.

When the mind has returned to a truth it had left, it leaves it no more.

January 29.

Nothing is perfect on this earth. Even piety is imperfect. Even the piety of saints.

Thursday, February 1.

How could the stars fail to have an always even movement and an always regular course? They touch nothing and nothing touches them. How could they themselves fail to have an ever-enduring form? Everything they emit they reabsorb; everything they exhale of their substance they breathe in again.