February 18.

And we stammer our thoughts for a long time before finding their proper word, as children stammer their words for a long time before being able to pronounce all their letters.

February 6.

Voltaire. This skillful man always spoke to men of their affairs or their pleasures.

— And philosophy rekindled the disputes that had gone out.

February 7.

And when one has left a lower sphere of ideas, one can no longer descend into it again. Accustomed to these clarities, the mind...

Of the charm of words. In what it consists. By what art one builds enchanted edifices with them.

Suspended. This idea enters essentially into every idea of enchantment. Radiance enters into it too. And lightness, and brief duration. Rapture, is the suspension of the soul.

The point of a needle required for the poem is necessary to the marvelous, for everything in it must be made with nothing or with little. And (remarkable thing!) the poem requires little matter. And it requires three worlds: the heavens, the earth, and the underworld. It cannot exist with less. But then, it is precisely because it requires so much space that it requires so little matter. For the effect of what is real is to diminish the place.

Splendor is a radiance that is total, peaceful, inward, and finally uniform at every point of what possesses it. Brilliance is in the parts. It is a radiance that is not in the whole mass, or does not penetrate it.

When I gather shells and find pearls inside, I extract the pearls and throw away the shells.

Strength? you say. Lucan showed more of it than Virgil, and Seneca more than Plato. The most hateful of writers. Even L. L., does not lack it; and Linguet had it. Brebœuf had more of it than Racine. Wisdom moderates its own, and power is a strength that is hidden. N. wrote with a saber, and N. N. with a stick. It seems to me that G. writes with knitting needles or hair bodkins.

“Your lot is to admire, not to know.” (Delile.) Such a lot is a happiness. Greater still is that of the man who can both know and admire. And, on that subject, Nota. Of knowledge that takes away admiration. It is bad knowledge. Through this knowledge, memory takes the place of sight; everything is reversed. A man who has become so much an anatomist that he has ceased to be a man sees in the noblest and [most] touching movement only a play of muscles, — like an organ builder who heard in the most beautiful music played on that instrument only the little noises of the keyboard. Everything is gold in bars to a mere assayer of metals. He melts everything, in thought, to put it into his crucible. He weighs masterpieces. His eye dissolves candelabra.

Of poetry through verse: it is made with words. And of poetry through thoughts: it is made with truth. I say with truth; I mean the truth that belongs to natures.

... and, since heaven wills it, to spend my life supporting the weight of my stomach.

When Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, she adored the tree.