July 2.

To follow in the footsteps. God let time engender the physical sciences, but reserved the others for himself. He himself created morality, poetry, etc. Their first seeds, recently produced by his hands, were placed by him in the souls and writings of the first men. Hence antiquity, closer to all the creations, must serve us as a model in the principles of these things—the principles that it had received and that it shows us purer. To avoid going astray, we must put our feet in the tracks of its own: to follow in the footsteps.

Indifference gives a false air of superiority.

July 3.

All personal possession is reciprocal. If you are my godson, I am your godfather. If you are my merchant, I am your customer. Finally, if you are mine, I am yours; we belong to one another, and as such owe each other support, help, affection, protection, and watchfulness, that is, attention and care.

July 4.

— who have learned everything except how to live, for they have had no time for it; occupied with other studies, so multiplied, so diverse, so opposed.

July 5.

These are pious games...

July 6.

Duties belong to morality, and practices or observances to religion: to religion that makes all useless things meritorious and, what am I saying sanctifying.

When a draftsman or a painter wishes to suggest a recess, they put dark over light. This is the artifice many serious writers employ, especially those who call themselves ideologues today. They give themselves a profound air through the crude illusion of a certain obscurity.

July 10.

The illusion that makes one say “this is beautiful” is a very good illusion. But the one that makes one say “this is true” is a pernicious illusion. The first lies to us and amuses us, not without utility; the second deceives us, inflates us, depraves us, harms us.

July 13.

Yes, our eloquence has acquired the habit of speaking into the air. Hence all our literary ills, and from them all our political ills. Chateaubriand has escaped this danger through his need to speak with his heart, and Fontanes through the necessity he has imposed upon himself of speaking with elegance.

One hears in all these discourses a voice that swells and loses itself.

For the soul feeds on the mind’s repose in these first years of life. Left to itself, it converts what is good into its own substance; it assimilates it, it makes nourishment of it and not an occupation.

July […].

There is a kind of neatness and frankness of style that depends on [temper] and temperament, like frankness of character. One may [love it], but must not demand it. Voltaire had it; the ancients did not [have it]. Those inimitable Greeks always had a true style, a fitting [style], an agreeable and amiable style, but not a [frank] style. This quality is moreover incompatible with others [essential] to beauty. It can ally itself with greatness, but not [with] dignity. There is something courageous and bold in it, [but] also something a little brusque and a little impetuous. [Only] Drancès in Virgil has the frank style, and in this he is modern, [he] is French.