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August 28.
At first, authors take their language from the world; then they take it from books, and then...
Ch. D—z. There is gloss in his style, and consequently falseness.
August 31.
The Soul, independent of the organs. The mind depends on them. That is to say, the playing depends on the instrument and the craft (or reasoned habit). But aptitude is natural, innate, essential, inherent in each self. In a word, talent belongs to bodily organization, intelligence to the quality of each soul.
There is more admiration than fear in the flattery of Eastern peoples; and Voltaire said very well of these peoples: “Slavery, which elsewhere has narrowed the mind, has made it extravagant among them.”
September 4.
It takes no more attention to read Voltaire than to hear a man speaking. Thus, in reading him, one has the posture of a man listening rather than that of a man reading. — He has put into his books a degree of clarity needed only in ordinary conversations.
September 5.
One must use for comparison only objects known to everyone, since one wishes to be understood by everyone.
It seems to me that you have wings and no feet. When one knocks in vain at the doors of these truths, one must try to enter through the window, and even through the chimney. In literature, space impresses you and deceives you.
There are authors who counterfeit: for example, Parny counterfeits the elegiac poet quite well. He has only an uncertain talent, and his glory will be fragile. One must dedicate to him in a boudoir a small bust in porcelain under a cover of crystal. This writer is elegant. But he lacks the two merits of his genre: he has neither tenderness nor fire.
The just, the beautiful, the good, the wise is what conforms to God’s ideas of the just, the beautiful, the wise, and the good. Plato was therefore right with his eternal ideas. Remove God from high philosophy, and there is no longer any clarity. He is its light and sun. He alone illuminates everything. And in your light we shall see light.
September 6.
Words that must never enter conversation. These are all those that, to be understood, need to be placed before the eyes in a book, and whose meaning requires great mental exertion to be comprehended.
September 8.
Make Homer’s poetry or Demosthenes’ eloquence fashionable: the French will produce it (and even excel at it).
September 9.
P[e]t[i]t[o]t has no inflections in his mind.