The best thoughts are those that need no beauty of expression to appear beautiful.

He pours out floods of light that illuminate nothing, but that everyone can use to kindle their own torch.

March 2.

“Philanthropy and repentance” is my motto. (Mr. E. S.)

“A strong head”; a physical quality that may amount only to conceiving or producing weak ideas strongly: I mean weak in truth, in clarity, in usefulness.

March 4.

That it is better to be Platonic and Aristotelian than Platonist and Aristotelic.

March 5.

De Bonnald. A seedsman author. His collection is indeed a storehouse of grain and precious seeds; — pure wheat, ground barley, rye, — and the pips of the best fruits are found there in abundance.

One must tell them: — Leave the reefs of discussion and throw yourselves into the ocean of oratorical forms; there you will have an open sea where you can sail and maneuver at ease.

The poorest, the smallest minds are capable of arguing and using abstract words; but they are not capable of being eloquent and moving beautiful words.

March 6.

“Three powers astonished at the knot that joins them.” The familiar expression would be this: “to find themselves together.” And it sometimes comes involuntarily to memory when memory wishes to recall this verse, so that one has at the same time the pleasure of having this familiar expression present and of avoiding it, which is a pleasure for the mind: why?

March […].

In the fifteenth century, thirst for the possessions of infidels and a ferocious zeal for the purity of faith. But the crimes of that time are at least excused by ardent passions. Those of ours have had cold systems and pride alone as their cause and principle.

March 9.

A religion without such books would be a literature without poetry, or a poetry without the marvelous, without old history. All this gives more vivid ideas of [devotion?], of perfection, and such fables in any case produce important and solid realities.

Wednesday, March 10.

Jansenism. It is the name of a fault, but not that of a heresy.