There is a kind of genius that seems to belong to the earth. It is strength. [Another] that partakes of earth and heaven, and it is elevation; [another], finally, that partakes of God: it is light and wisdom or the light [of] the mind. All light comes from above.

Among literary qualities, some depend on the organs, others [on] the soul; some on cultivation, some others on nature. [Verve], for example, is given to us; and good taste is acquired. [Intelligence] comes from the soul, craft comes from habit. What comes from [the] soul is more beautiful, and everything natural to us is more divine.

Verve (which is given to us) depends on the organs; intelligence or wisdom depends on the soul.

Every system is an artifice, a fabrication that interests me little. [I] examine what natural riches it contains; and I attend only to the treasure. Others, on the contrary, care only about the [coffer]. They know its dimensions and how it is made, whether of cypress, sandalwood, aloes, mahogany or walnut. Silkworms need bits of wood arranged in a certain [way] in order to spin; these must be left to them and supplied if need be; but it is not at the bits of wood and the distaff that one must look; it is at the silk.

Of certain minds, better and yet unrecognized, because no measure has yet been invented, or at least used, to gauge or weigh these. It is like a precious metal that has no touchstone.

The words that serve to regulate our morals and our tempers, that are used in morality, such as these: “gentle mind, gentle understanding,” have become rare and unused in our language, as unused and as rare as the ascetic terms that serve piety. A literary, scientific, political, poetic language, or one of mere conversation, is the only kind that makes itself heard.

April 21.

Understanding and “gentleness of understanding”: A gentle understanding is patient, seeks to understand slowly, lends itself “to being convinced,” avoids obstinacy, prefers to be enlightened rather than to dominate. A gentle mind and gentleness of mind are something else. A gentle mind makes us easy to content.

In Scripture (at least for us), beauty lies wholly in the words. The words are beautiful. And the completion of the sense alone constitutes the whole sentence. No cunning of style, no artifice, but an entirely divine naturalness.

That language in which are all the terms expressing the needs of the soul and the body... Oil, wool, wheat, peace, justice, holiness, mercy, abundance... And abundance in the towers; this is political and natural.

Yes, everything for honor or honors; a fine morality, such an alternative!

The most glorious and most lasting of goods are “peace” that comes from “strength” and “abundance in the towers.”

Newton, Chateaubriand, Voltaire, etc., in letters, in the sciences and in the arts. They come like sorts of kings or conquerors who use, for good or for evil, what others have amassed. Others are only legislators, reforming magistrates, who gather only the wisdom of past centuries and their own to remedy the evils of the present time and the dangers of the future. Others, finally, are literary speculators who work only to enrich their style with all that has been said, all that has been done and all that they see, occupied with their renown and intending neither any evil nor any good.

The essential utility or inutility of our thoughts is the sole constant principle of their glory or their oblivion.