December 15.

One must attack superstition through religion and not through physics, which is a terrain where it is not. But if you bring it there by drawing it out of itself, you also draw it out of every idea of heaven, and instead of correcting it, you risk making it worse. Cicero therefore goes about it badly and is blameworthy for etc. He shows his brother Quintus better and wiser than himself.

Friday, December 17.

There are a thousand ways to prepare and season speech; and Cicero loved them all. It should suffice that the one put to use is skillfully employed and can please: As for its singularity, that gives it a claim to attention, but not to exclusion, if it is otherwise beyond reproach.

Tacitus’s style, though less beautiful (less rich in pleasing colors and varied turns of phrase, etc.), is nevertheless perhaps more perfect than even Cicero’s. For all its words are carefully tended and have their weight, their measure and their exact number. Now, that is perfection. For supreme perfection resides in a perfect whole and perfect elements.

Instead of judging a work by art, people judge it by works. Now one must resemble art without resembling any work. Art (or the rule), the rule (or necessity, need), is clarity, is charm, distinctness, usefulness.

There are things one can speak about well only in writing, that one can know well only when one thinks of writing them, and that one nevertheless can think of writing only when one knows them beforehand.

The Church’s decision on matters of natural law. Do these fall within its jurisdiction? Decided by the father or by the son, they no longer need to be decided by the Holy Spirit. (Loan, income, etc.)