February 10.

The voice sounds human. And there are prosaic verses and inflated verses in which one recognizes the poet and a beautiful nature. It is not always the what, but the who that charms us in a work. Likewise, in her gait the goddess was revealed: one often recognizes an excellent author by the movement of his sentence and the gait of his style, whatever he says, as one can recognize a well-brought-up man by his walk, wherever he goes.

February 11.

Wisdom would unquestionably have taken half his wit from Voltaire. It would have constrained his temper. His verve needed to wander wildly in order to circulate freely; he was born for license! Sad condition of his mind, deplorable alternative! to be, by observing proprieties, only an elegant and useful writer, or to be, by respecting nothing, a charming and pernicious author!

Never did a man (as has been very well observed) have a less independent soul.

Gray hair, a mixture of strength and old age.

February 14.

One must be one’s own judge and censor, but not one’s sole legislator. When our will alone is our rule, what can serve as a rule for our will?

Imaginary obligation: what one prescribes for oneself on one’s own, one exempts oneself from on one’s own and whenever one wishes.

One must always keep in one’s head an open and free corner to give a place to our friends’ opinions and lodge them there as they pass. One must, finally, have a hospitable heart and mind. It becomes truly unbearable to converse with men who have in their brains only compartments in which every place is taken.

February 15.

Effeminate charms. Perhaps they are in Racine. In [many] written discourses there are women’s voices rather than [men’s] voices. The voice of wisdom holds the middle, like a [celestial] voice that is of neither sex; such is the voice of Fénelon and of Plato.

To wish to give sounds to a language that has none; it is the singing [of the] cauldron.

A fine appearance and fine manners. Fine manners tend to imitate a fine appearance. One stands straight to appear tall. One [draws back] one’s shoulders to make one’s chest broad. One walks with one’s head [raised] to give one’s neck a more graceful length. A fine [appearance] depends on the construction of a well-made body; fine manners give [us] some appearance of it.

February […].

There are words pleasing to the eye (as there are some pleasing to [the ear]). Through a happy mixture of the letters of which they are formed or [through] the charm of those letters. For each letter has its figure.

One could say to Mr. de Barante: To write, wait for [clear] words and luminous ideas. Someone who is content with abstract notions and expressions is a man who writes and thinks [only] in ciphers.

February […].

Tartuffe. The form of religious affections is acted out in it: and that is doubtless a great evil.

February […]4.

Of those who have a stammering mind and how the mind becomes a stammerer.