November […]4.

Poetic manners are those of the golden age, patriarchal manners those of the Bible. Grave and austere manners are those of history. Holy or religious manners are those of legends. If, then, we wish to know everything, or to know everything worthy of imitation, we must also read legends; we must make them part of our studies and our observations.

Saints. The wonders of their lives are not their miracles, but their manners.

Their manners are more wonderful than their miracles. Do not believe in their miracles, then, if you wish, but believe in their manners. Nothing is better attested, and what am I saying? Those manners still endure, here in a convent, there in a thatched cottage, farther on in a palace and farther still in the deserts.

Poetic manners are those of human life and of the solitary individual. Patriarchal manners should be those of the family. Grave manners, those of the public man; and simple manners, those of the priest, the old man, the sick man, the Christian.

Of words and their abundance. Flowers and fruits must be given by the handful and the basketful. But pearls and diamonds, one by one, and counting them.

November 5.

Madness is a disease of the brain, and not a disease of the mind.

Of lights (in literature). Lights illuminate the soul, and anything that does not illuminate the soul is not light. The soul can be enlightened only about what is analogous to it, about beings and relations spiritual like itself, about its nature, its duties.

A skilled chemist, machinist, anatomist, agronomist, etc. is not enlightened by his kind of knowledge: he is only instructed, that is to say, trained, exercised, made apt or skilled in a particular exercise. Neither anvils, hammers, scalpels, receivers, retorts, nor even plows are candles.

Who said to a passionate admirer of the hollows and windings of a countryside: “O how you love women!”

God has no need of men’s good actions for his designs.

Then God draws our strength back to himself, and we grow old.

The naked man is only an ape without hair and without wrinkles. In bulk, he has the proportions that make him beautiful only when clothed or in some posture that conceals his disproportions.

November 6.

Of studies that contract and studies that dilate the brain. Recreative, etc.

Light, frivolous, distracted minds may sometimes like what is abstract, what is abstruse. They find some rest in it, some pleasure. It fixes them by stopping them, without their being able to advance or go beyond.