February 25.

Abbé Barthélemi. Has made his subject simper. His erudition is false and lies through too great a wish to please.

Thucydides. Neither he nor his translator has suppleness. But Thucydides wrote with a bronze stylus, and Levêque translated him with an iron pen, and iron that has not polished.

Xenophon had a swan’s quill and Plato a golden pen.

March 5.

The sign then makes one forget the thing signified.

March 12.

Greeks. Lucian. — Even the dregs of this literature, in its old age, yield a delicate residue.

March 15.

Abbé Fleury. A half-Fénelon. Rustic Fénelon. He is to Fénelon what Xenophon is to Plato.

March 31.

The violin presents in its form two lyres united, that is, joining and merging at their tops.

April 6.

The strength of the will, — and that weaker wills always yield to stronger wills. But the strength of the will (that is, its effective strength) depends on bodily organization, not on the strength of desire.

No doctrine was ever so well proportioned to all the natural needs of the human heart and mind — This bread — these dead.

Ah! the pomp and splendor you reproach them for have been the effect and are the proof of this incomparable excellence. For where did this power and these excessive riches come from, if not from the enchantment she brought into the whole world? Ravished by her goodness, thousands and millions of men heaped gifts, bequests, and grants upon her from century to century. She had the art of making herself loved, of making people happy. This is what made so many lavish givers, and from this came her power.

What use is modesty? — It serves to make one appear more beautiful when one is beautiful, and less ugly when one is ugly.

The hypocrisy of irreligion.

A fury to instruct — and to mix the drool of one’s own mind into everything one teaches.

Gellert made moral virtue consist in “being pious and content.” That was the whole of his morality.