True metaphysics consists not in making abstract what is perceptible, but in making perceptible what is abstract, apparent what is hidden, imaginable if possible what is merely intelligible, and finally intelligible what eludes attention.

Faith. To dare to take communion, one must have not only its acts, but its habits.

March 13.

Voltaire. A very brilliant, very active mind. He occupied... the region between madness and good sense, and going perpetually from one to the other...

March 15.

“The virtuous public” and “judicious” (as Mr. de Bonnald says) is alone the true public, the only public whose votes can count and whose judgments can make law.

March 16.

Of things one must remain ignorant of (though permitted) because (they are uncertain and) they are harmful to us. Such are the habitation of the stars, etc.

If their globes have some relations [with] ours — but their inhabitants can have none with us. To occupy ourselves with them is to unoccupy ourselves with our duties.

March 18.

Of what is true by lamplight and is not true in sunlight (when put to the test).

March 22.

Against strict precision (literary, political and moral).

Strength of soul and strength of mind are like the body’s strengths: they wear out, and often a trifle brings them down.

March 27.

The “fabricators of false poetry.” (Dussault.)

April 2.

For perhaps it is permitted, perhaps even prescribed, or at least fitting, to speak of old things in an old style, of new things in a recent style, and of things yet to come in an unheard-of style.

The one halted the human mind and suspended its course. The other restores to it a movement it had lost for too long.