March 1.

Ancients. One must read them slowly. One needs much patience (that is, much attention) to have much pleasure when going through beautiful works.

Of joy without wit (in most old comedies). But this joy communicates itself. One tastes in them an artless pleasure that truly refreshes.

March 2.

What is ingenious readily attaches itself to the mind (or readily enters the memory). Therefore. Note: ingenious.

March 3.

Athenaeus: it is (under the pretext of clarifying a people’s morals and customs) to give an account of everything that goes on in its latrines; it is to bring its sewers into broad daylight.

To descend into ourselves, we must first rise.

It is not their meaning that one must examine (of certain words), it is their effect that one must feel.

For him, I prefer his position to his ambition.

March 5.

Oh! how difficult it is to be at once ingenious and sensible!

Some pass through beautiful ideas, others stay in them. And the latter are the happiest, but the others are the greatest.

Long deprived of ideas that suited my mind or of language that suited those ideas.

March 9.

There is therefore both power and impossibility at once.

— and these words are like drops for the mind.