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October 31.
In these novels, considered from the side of art, it is a flame that is to be painted; and a blaze is painted there.
... through bad habits of my brain that spoil my thoughts. As bad dispositions of the throat spoil singing.
Thus organization, as they call it, has more influence on expression than on the soul.
The color of truth is clarity, transparency, self-evidence.
November 1.
Herodotus flows without a sound.
November 2.
In that century, minds held more relaxation than attention.
There are forms so pure, so beautiful in themselves that one can use them successfully, empty or full. And there are materials so precious in themselves that one must admire them whatever the form that contains them. But what is more precious to work with than what is truly of the mind?
When the form is beautiful, one must praise the form. And when it is the material, one must praise the material. By material I mean thought here. For it is books that are at issue.
“Style (says Dussault) is a habit of the mind.” He is right. Happy those in whom it is a habit of the soul.
In Fontanes, style is a habit of taste.
These critics know how to distinguish and appraise neither rough diamonds nor gold in bars. In literature they know only what passes current, only coins. They are merchants. Their criticism has scales, a precision balance; but it has neither crucible nor touchstone.
They see details so clearly only because they cannot embrace the whole, which would distract them from those details.
Whatever they may say, there is not a single ingenious turn of phrase in all Cicero’s letters. He abstains from it; that itself is remarkable there. There is not a single fact, a single reflection that teaches us the history of that time better than we would know it if these letters did not exist. Domestic details that reveal the manners of the time and the manners of the man, when one looks closely, are all that one finds of interest in them.
The fools of the Mercure, the ignoramuses of the Journal des Débats, the precious of the Publiciste, the sectarians of the Décade, the fops of the Journal de Paris, the good people of the Magazin encyclopédique, the wits of the [ ] (Archiv. Nales.)
From the beautiful comes a pleasure the whole soul approves.
November 3.
Like a clock whose chimes run faster than its hand. His brain runs faster than his mind.