Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

December […]8.

Nothing is more beautiful than a beautiful book.

December 10.

These tunes that readily present themselves again to memory because everything recalls them to us, in all our secret movements, those of the heart, those of the blood, those of walking.

December 20.

One must be a child, in religion. And in this field artless books are the best.

December 22.

We should pride ourselves on being reasonable, but not on being right.

December 30.

Cold sense is a great enemy of the good.

“Reason (said Mlle de M+lan) is made only for reasonable people.”

Tenderness is the repose of passion.

T422.Beautiful repeats rather than being replaced with different evaluative adjectives. No particular book or material binding is identified.

T735.The 8 is clear, but damaged vertical fragments occupy the preceding digit area. No complete one-digit day or reconstructed preceding digit is certified.

T423.The nominal relative construction continues across pages 669–670 as one paragraph without a finite main assertion. Tunes renders airs; present themselves again keeps the return to memory. Heart, blood, and walking remain distinct movements, with the repeated those of retained.

T736.This nominal opening and its relative construction continue as one paragraph at the top of page 670, through ceux de la marche. No finite main clause is supplied. The 10 is clear despite neighboring margin damage.

T424.The comma after child remains. Artless renders naïfs as uncontrived or ingenuous here, not automatically foolish or factually mistaken. The comparison concerns books within the stated field.

T425.Pride ourselves follows the earlier rendering of se piquer. Being reasonable and being right remain distinct aspirations, with the negation attached to the second.

T426.The source prints sens froid, not sang-froid. Cold sense preserves the intellectual noun and adjective rather than substituting composure or cool blood. The good remains distinct from mere usefulness.

T427.Reason and reasonable preserve the repeated root. Mlle remains the French form of address, and the opaque M+lan is not expanded to a conjectural name. The attribution stays within the quotation.

T428.Repose renders repos as rest, without deciding that passion has disappeared. This is the last source block before ANNÉE 1809; the following January entries belong to the 1809 section.