February 3.

The ingenious man. A light that comes from him. The inspired man has his head above the clouds. Discoveries in space, and encounters in place.

There is a thought that contains the essence of an entire book; a sentence that has the beauties of a vast work; a unity that is equivalent to a number; finally, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals a great and glorious composition in merit and excellence.

— As a little light is better than much radiance, a little air than much vapor, a little water than much mud.

Fontanes — Colors in prose, sculpts in verse.

There are thoughts so subtle or so profound that one does not understand them unless one clothes them in expression that can, by fixing them in memory, hold them, in a sense, before attention and give it time to comprehend them. These must be given more body or shape or color than the others. (To redo.)

Vices and virtues. These are the evils and the goods. What produces these is a misfortune, a calamity, a disaster, a true scourge. What produces the others is a happiness, a prosperity, a gift from heaven.

February 4.

“To reunite the two worlds,” that is, to give body to what has none and spirit to what lacks it; finally, “to animate” (for the mind) everything that can be animated, etc.: an important literary function.

Minds badly cultivated — and badly sown. The field covered with poisonous plants — and believing itself as fertile and as rich as the field covered with crops. Thus: minds sown with wheats, or sown with poisons.

Gazes too piercing, or that, instead of stopping at what they consider, pierce it and always go beyond.

Minds that are organized, — or arranged like a musical instrument, like an organ, like a lyre. Everything that comes from them is a sound. There are other minds (and these are the greater number) whose solidity is flat. Nothing sounds or resounds in them. All the thoughts they produce are like nothing but noise. Hammer blow[…] on an anvil or on wood.

And observe that this is better for imagination and happiness, but not for the uses of life and society, for if one wishes to build, mud is better than clear water; if one has sown, vapor is better than pure air; if one wishes to shine, finally, radiance is better than light.

In truth, for simple life it is otherwise. For drinking is more pleasant and more necessary than building, breathing more necessary than harvesting, seeing, finally, and being illuminated more necessary and also more pleasant than being dazzled.

If, then, it happened that those who build muddied the rivers and fountains, that those who shine impaired all clarity, and that those who plow and sow filled the air with thick fogs, the arts would have to be suspended. And we suspend them innocently, that is, without harming them or ourselves, when we wish to restrain them within their limits and take from them that excess of audacity they derive from their power, and that excess of power they derive from opinion.

Pure spirits (angels, for example) are alive and not animated. Animation is only a half-life, and animality only a half-creation.

One can say that no faith (but not that no opinion) spoils the mind.