Whoever laughs at evil, whatever that evil may be, does not have a perfectly upright moral sense.

December 10.

As if, indeed, tragedy were a matter of puzzling the mind. It is the heart that must be occupied, and it is the heart that is distracted. How.

December 12.

Voltaire, Rousseau. One should read them when one wants to unlearn. They make one doubt everything that is known, everything that is certain.

If you want property to be sacred, bring heaven into it. Nothing is sacred where God is not.

Then everything that belongs to man has disappeared; only what belongs to the soul remains.

December 15.

A sort of material mind. There are few spiritual ones.

December 16.

With Christianity, the common people were the wisest. The high virtues were common among women, and even among children.

December 21. (Paris.)

It is our idea that we love, that we hate.

Of peoples who have clearly conceived the idea of spiritual substances, who have clearly distinguished spirit from matter, soul from body, and God from his works. How long this difference, so easy for us to grasp, remained confused. Advantage of the peoples who knew it first and retained it.

To paint in objects only what strikes, only what touches, only what serves, only what generally makes itself perceived.

The great Soul thinks much of other souls, of their pains, their pleasures, their needs. The great Soul would like to see great prosperity reign everywhere, with peace, innocence, tranquility, justice, piety, rest of mind, finally all the goods of soul and body.

Those critics who fear that beautiful actions will pass for true.