Thursday, October 21.

The “search for truth,” when the law says it has been found; I mean the law already ancient and recognized as excellent by ancestors who were good men.

October 22.

By listening to one’s senses, one destroys good sentiments; and, with senses too pampered, too cultivated and too exquisite, one shuns acts of virtue (and note well the gray sister).

October 25.

Don Quixote going to Toboso and speaking to Sancho as Socrates to his disciples; and this is not ridiculous and does not even seem out of place.

November 5.

Chateaubriand. His images are reasons.

November 9.

Suicide. A new disease added to yellow fever, etc. But this one comes from the mind.

November 8.

To believe in oneself and in one’s calling. Let a priest believe himself sent, a physician believe in his art, and a king in his kingship, in his lieutenancy of God. If he believes himself only a man, he is only a mayor or a prefect.

November 9.

Bourgeois roundness. One must not square it too much, nor taper or refine it.

That is indeed style awaited, but not style sought. Of style awaited: it is very good when it arrives, and style sought is too, when one finds it; the first is the better.

November 11.

O examples! O models! four or five sensations a day suffice for them to find themselves happy and to bless providence! Look at Lavau: straw to lie on, bread three times a day and a few pinches of snuff make him a king.

November 14.

They live in their heads, and not in the world.

November 15.

With the best representative government possible, you would still have only a bad people — and a foolish public.

November 17.

Petrarch “thought little of” the Italian poems that immortalized him. He preferred his Latin to them. This is because his century loved Latin and did not yet love Italian.