Words, when well chosen, are abridgments of a sentence.

Words are the bodies and the outward place of thoughts.

Words are transparent places or mirrors, and the [only ones] in which our thoughts are visible. The importance of words — or — [Of] the importance of thoughts.

It is not so much the sound as the sense of words that so [often] holds good writers’ pens in suspense. Nothing is more apt [to] make the worth and importance of words keenly felt than what I [had] said at first; I repeat it: when words are well chosen, they [are] abridgments of sentences. The abridgment of a sentence. Say the abridgment of many sentences or, to put it better, their worth. Of words friendly to [the] memory, and of those that are not. It is to choosing the [first] and rejecting the second that the skillful writer applies himself. To write [for] memory. Of those who write for oblivion.

There is something worse than oblivion for authors: [the] memory of their faults imprinted by their own efforts in the [memory] of readers.

Most take care to write in such a way that one [can] read them without obstacle or without difficulty, and cannot in [any] way remember what they have said: they are prolix. The [period] of Dt and Pt is suited and convenient to this design or this effect. It amuses the voice, the ear, even attention, and leaves nothing [after] it. It has flattered and passed, like a sound that comes from a sheet of paper, — from a sheet of paper one has leafed through.

Of words that are interesting in themselves; and of those that are [not].

Of sound, of sense; good sense, good sound. The ear and attention flattered.

Delalot (Z) is a heretic who speaks well of certain dogmas.

— and to draw from the passions the only good effect they can produce, — to soften the soul for something better. [Thus] love softens it for piety. Ambition itself... (see the memoirs of Montrésor.)

Study, in preparing for eternal contemplations...

It was not useful to leave the name of L—L—nt— [Lalande]; but it has not been honorable to remove it.