The idea of order in all things, that is to say, of literary order and moral order, of political order and religious order, the idea of order, well or badly conceived, is the basis of all education, good or bad, and the principle of all folly or all wisdom.

Minds that have been unable to taste the charms of order, or that c[…] charm has been unable to hold or recall, are bad minds.

Nothing lasts forever. But what lasts longest is order, [because] it is what is most fitting and best suited to the nature of things.

To be mistaken about order is to the mind what being mistaken about the beautiful is to taste.

Everything very amusing has some exaggeration and necessarily contains a disfigured truth.

May 31.

Order, moral, political, literary, and religious. To judge order, one has feeling, intelligence, the whole soul.

June 1.

It seems to me that Aristotle’s style contains more formulas than turns of phrase.

But eloquence and even poetry among the ancients (and perhaps also their sculpture, their music, etc.) had their formulas too, their fixed nomes.

Rivarol. His malice had given him the idea (and the instinct, Cérutti said) of all sorts of ridiculousness; and he saw them wherever he wished.

It is indeed God’s will that the afflicted find consolation, and when they wish to abandon themselves to their sorrows, he consoles them despite themselves.

Envy, for example, is a vice that causes nothing but pain.

June 2.

Taste. When nothing awakens it, there is no need to satisfy it; it is enough not to wound it.

There is the soul’s taste, the body’s taste, and a mixed taste connected with imagination. That one feeds on forms.