You may set up limits in vain: one sees space beyond them and runs there. One would like to break your bars. — Your no farther was written by pygmies.

To philosophize with one’s soul, and not merely with one’s mind, which is only one of its instruments, or with one’s reason, which is only one of our faculties. There are therefore the philosophy of the soul, the philosophy of reason, and that of the mind.

Every soul is an eye, just as the whole body is a sense of touch. The one perceives many truths of which it cannot be certain; the other reaches many things it will never be able to handle.

There is a residue of wisdom (as there is a residue of folly); and in human wisdom this residue purified by old age is perhaps the best we have.

I see in the world, he said, only people who have bad opinions and are made to have good ones, and others [who] have good opinions and are made to have [bad] ones. And fairly wise people who were born fools, and [foolish] people who were born wise.

August […].

In the good [literary] ages, there is no beautiful and good style that is not full of subtleties, but delicate subtleties. [Delicacy] and subtlety alone are the true signs of true [talent]. Everything can be imitated, strength, gravity, vehemence and even [lightness]; but subtlety and delicacy cannot be [counterfeited] for long. Without them, a sound style indicates only an [upright] mind.

Piety, religion. It is a fire that example sustains and that goes out [if it] is not communicated.

The saints who had wit seem to me far superior to the [philosophers]. They all lived happier, more useful, more [exemplary] lives.

August […].

... through resemblance or through imitation.

Uncertain colors. All beautiful colors are uncertain, [that] is, mixed with some hue other than their own (as [in] our flesh tones, in the rainbow), in the great painters. Rembrandt’s [yellow] is not pure yellow, Rubens’s red is [not] a pure red. Greuze’s eyes...

Just as in penmanship children are first taught to [form] their letters well, in rhetoric [pupils] must first be taught to form their figures well, to […] them well. In all the arts one [must] pass from the strong to the gentle, from the stiff to the supple. Finally, one must [begin] with straight strokes, before curves.

August […]3.

A beautiful drawing can do without beautiful color, and beautiful [color] can do without a beautiful drawing. One of these two perfections can [suffice] for our pleasure. Likewise, when a beautiful expression results from either drawing or coloring at the principal point of a [painting], the [rest] matters little to us, if we listen more to our feeling than to the [rules]. Now it often happens that feeling is satisfied when [criticism] is dissatisfied; feeling is not wrong, although criticism [is] right. For where there is enough beauty for taste and for [pleasure], there is not always enough for judgment and for art.