To make poetry one must be a poet; and to make a religion, one must be eminently religious.
Feeling is always slow, it folds back upon itself. The mind is quick, it wants to reach.
May 24.
The punishment of bad princes is to be thought worse than they […] are.
May 25.
Water that resembles crystal, crystal that resembles water. Because then each of these objects offers two.
Paper is patient, but the reader is not.
Like Father Garasse, who utters insults with pleasure, with joy, with delight. And so he is fluent and eloquent when he insults.
May 26.
“To come to the aid of a ruined age ” should be the university’s motto.
May 27.
Let us imitate them by allowing ancestor worship to endure, as they do.
Judgment wants to judge; and, if it dominates, one is a habitual judge.
“We love truth so much (says Father Daniel) that everything with some appearance of it seduces us.” That is ingenious. — We love peace of mind so much that we stop at anything with some appearance of truth. (This would be more exact.) […] we fall asleep on the clouds. (This last touch would be for […] memory.)
May 30.
— and teachers must be their pupils’ guides, not their friends. Children should have their companions as friends […] not their fathers and their teachers.
Cérutti. This man had a mind that was not master of l[…] self.
T286. Make recurs with poetry and religion, preserving the parallel faire constructions. Eminently renders éminemment without adding an institutional role or replacing religion with a creed.
T287. Feeling and mind retain their contrasted pace. Folds back upon itself preserves the reflexive image; wants to reach remains without a supplied object, goal, or destination.
T288. The comparison concerns what princes are thought to be. The gap after they remains; no lost French negation or pronominal wording is restored from the expected construction. The source’s singular cru before plural pires is recorded in its separate qualification.
T289. The reciprocal images retain their order. The Because sentence remains a dependent fragment, and two is not expanded into two materials or two literal objects.
T646. The first nominal formulation and the subsequent Parce que statement retain their separate structure. The ending and punctuation of the right-edge l’eau are qualified from the surviving l’ea and next-line capital Parce .
T290. The personification and brief contrast remain without explanation inside the aphorism.
T291. Father renders the abbreviation p. The opening Like remains a comparison without an added governing clause. With recurs through pleasure, joy, and delight; fluent distinguishes disert from eloquent. No object is added after insults.
T647. The ending of right-edge joye is qualified from joy ; the first Comme formulation remains without a governing main clause. The abbreviation p. remains lowercase.
T292. The Latin infinitive is independently translated as To come to the aid of a ruined age. Ruined retains the force of everso without specifying a particular upheaval. The phrase remains quoted and italic, and no institution is identified beyond Joubert’s university. The phrase draws on Virgil, Georgics I.500: Joubert retains three words from the longer line, omitting its intervening iuuenem and surrounding construction. The original passage appeals for aid to an age in ruin; the English does not import its named or implied participants into Joubert’s motto.
T648. The italic Latin retains its printed æ ligature. The ending and punctuation of université are damaged at the right edge and qualified from universit ; no institution is identified beyond the wording.
T293. The plural them and they remain unidentified. Allowing the worship to endure preserves laisser subsister rather than changing it into founding or reviving a cult.
T649. Imitons les remains unhyphenated; the plural referents are not identified.
T294. Judgment and judge repeat the same root. Habitual judge renders jugeur as a disposition to judge, not as appointment to a court. The conditional link to judgment dominating remains. The term also carries a disparaging edge, recorded in the later nineteenth-century Littré entry.
T295. The attributed quotation and Joubert’s proposed correction remain distinct. Peace of mind renders repos d’esprit in connection with stopping and falling asleep. Some appearance recurs without certifying truth. Both textual gaps remain unfilled, and the final touch refers to the image just added without supplying the lost word before memory.
T650. The right-edge endings of qui , Nous and tout are qualified from their surviving beginnings. A nearly isolated vertical stroke after the first closing parenthesis cannot certify Et or any other connective, so a gap remains. The word or words between pour and next-line mémoire are also lost and left as a gap; la is possible but not certified.
T296. The opening dash and lowercase and remain. Must preserves the stated obligation of teachers; should renders the corresponding claim about children without identifying a particular school. The missing connective before not is not supplied. Fathers and teachers remain separate terms.
T651. The e of right-edge de is lost and its reading is qualified from d . After camarades the edge retains no certifiable connective; et is possible but not restored. The opening et remains lowercase after the dash.
T297. The printed name is retained. The surviving l[…] remains French residue, followed by self for même . Lui-même is a plausible intended reflexive, but the lost letters and connecting punctuation are not restored. The incomplete expression is not silently converted to a fully legible itself.
T652. Cérutti retains its printed acute and double t. Only l survives before the right-edge loss and next-line même ; lui is contextually plausible, but its ending and any connecting punctuation are not certified.