— which leads to moral truth, that is, to inclinations in keeping with the rule that is a metaphysical truth. Historical truth is not necessary to produce this great effect.
A great number of festivals makes people ingenious, provided the festivals are religious. There are no true festivals except religious festivals.
This Alfieri is only a convict, condemned by nature to the galleys of the Italian Permesse.
July 9.
A harmonious style in a newspaper article would be as out of place, as ridiculous, as a declamatory, heavily accented tone in the remarks of conversation.
July 12.
Style, sometimes little in keeping with usage, but in keeping with nature, and reaching — outside art — the aim of art: attention and remembrance.
July 14.
There are facts that are beautiful and worthy of full attention only when they are true. There are others beautiful enough and pleasing enough to have no need to be true.
July 16.
I. That: one must have a religion, and not merely religion; and that a religion is very well said.
II. That piety is not a religion, although it is the soul of all religions.
III. That one thus has no religion when one has only pious inclinations, just as one has no homeland when one has only philanthropy.
IV. That: one has a homeland or is a citizen of a country only when one resolves to observe and defend certain laws, to obey certain magistrates, to adopt certain ways of acting and being.
July 17.
Some can find activity only in rest, and others rest only in movement.
Heads with no windows. Nothing comes into them from the side of heaven. Or daylight never comes into them from above.
August 7.
Meta-physico-logues are not metaphysicians on that account; nor are polici-logues politicians; nor are those who write about poetry poets.
August 12.
The mediocre is the excellent for the mediocre.
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The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II · Book Mode · Diotimos