May 28.

Excess and too much are not the same thing. Excess is worth nothing; too much is often necessary.

All Balzac’s sentences have a beautiful sound and a beautiful sense.

— all his fancies spoke very loudly, so it was necessary to speak louder than his fancies.

Montesquieu. His head is an instrument that has all its strings and is in tune, but that is also strung too tight and whose sounds are too high. Though it performs nothing against the rules, there is something in its vibrations (too continuous and too hurried) that lies beyond all the clefs of beautiful and wise music.

May 29.

Montesquieu. Indeed, that is no book to make one wise.

Of maternal tenderness. — but I remember its strength, because it was exemplary. Now, the occasion recalls the rule; and that is why everything exemplary has its influences.

May 30.

To use only gold and silver coins in the commerce of speech.

June 1.

R-ss- etc. They have painted and gilded the psalms and thus made them a painted and gilded simplicity. They have covered with the superfluous a work whose essential, unique character is the absolutely necessary.

All is sculpture and relief in the Bible. To make such a style flowing is to melt it; it is at least to melt a statue.

Hebrew characters cannot be made cursive.

Balzac. His words are sonorous, but not empty.

The equivalent is the object of translation.

“Truth alone is lovable.” But truth alone is not always so.

June 3.

He is a man full of that gray bile that inclines one to contempt.

June 4.

We are in a hurry in life, and these resolute characters, however weak they secretly are, resemble those boundary stones we would rather go around than take the trouble to cross or move when we meet them in our path. Likewise, those opinions that must be besieged according to the rules. We blockade them or turn aside from them and pass on for our own convenience alone.