Glass and its marvels. The astonishment of the bird that sees [through] the pane a fly it wants to seize and that its beak cannot reach.

The holy books and the world. God hides himself in the former as in the latter. He shows himself in their beauties and hides himself in their imperfections.

October 28.

Let us round out Nicole’s maxim and say: — To know how to say well everything one says is to know a great deal.

Nicole’s maxim is this: “To know what one must say to others is to be very learned.” Let us add: — And to oneself.

The art of speaking well is the art of hitting. — To speak badly or give a bad arrangement to one’s words or one’s thoughts is to take one’s sword by the point or the middle, to want to drive it in by the pommel.

October 29.

The two suns we have in our head.

October 30.

To speak without good faith, never to be stopped by good reasons, and to count justice and truth as nothing or little is to be suited to disputation.

You wish to speak to someone: first open the ears.

Few men are worthy of being heads of families, and few families are capable of having a head.

Nicole. The fabric, indeed, is excellent (as Mrs. de Sévigné said), but it is not worked with enough relief.

Scholastic logic is no longer taught to young people in the schools, and they spend their lives reasoning. They are taught rhetoric for two years, and they disdain its charms, the art of pleasing in discourse; they want to convince and reign. The philosophy they are taught aims to give them opinions, and rhetoric serves them only in being judgers, assigning their rank to the writers they have heard the teacher speak of.

The sounds of the Aeolian harp (or lyre). They are not connected, but they are ravishing.

October 31.

I am an Aeolian harp. No wind has blown upon me.

November 1.

In all things, let us beware of digging beneath the foundations.