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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1806

March 23.

The broken style admits and even requires more adornments than the continuous style. It is subject, in a sense, to the laws of the sonnet, of which it has been said that Apollo himself “forbade a weak line ever to enter it.” If the continuous style has the richness of the broken style, it is not good. What would one say of a river that carried nothing but pearls and diamonds? The continuous style must be clearer and simpler than the other...

One must not, and naturally one cannot, heap up and pour out at the same time.

There are too many thoughts in the world today, and not enough great thoughts.

March 25.

Those minds for which the temperature of their century is not good. — Other times and other heats...

March 29.

It is indeed clear that it was from Voltaire that Geoffroy learned to be amusing.

March 30 (Palm Sunday.)

... at that age when the powers of our body, shifting their place, withdraw into our mind.

For the mind can discover many truths at a single glance and early on, when by chance it finds itself placed in the direction and on the line where they are.

Physical truths whose discovery has many uses for human life, but whose conception causes the soul no happiness because they are of an entirely outward nature and order.

“Bossuet (says Mr. Gaillard) is an ancient who appeared only among the moderns” Mme de V[intimi]lle.

Tuesday, April 1.

Almost everywhere one finds only words that are clear and thoughts that are not. Sometimes, however...

T75.Broken style renders style couppé as prose divided into short, distinct units. The quoted rule about a weak line entering a sonnet parallels Boileau’s L’Art poétique, canto II. The river carrying jewels and the next paragraph’s heap up and pour out preserve the material comparison.

T76.The fragment keeps the physiological and climatic image. Other times and other heats retains the unusual plural chaleurs; it is not replaced by an abstract phrase about congenial surroundings.

T77.The source’s Pâques fleurie names Palm Sunday; the Académie’s 1798 entry records Pâques fleuries for the Sunday immediately before Easter. The body’s powers shift their place and withdraw into the mind; the English supplies no particular age or medical explanation.

T281.The parenthetical feast qualification belongs to the printed date; fleurie retains its singular form.

T78.This is a nominal fragment with relative clauses and no completing main verb. The usefulness of discovering physical truths is distinguished from their conception bringing happiness to the soul.

T282.The nominal-relative fragment has no supplied main verb; tout extérieur remains singular as printed.

T79.The source attributes the saying to Mr. Gaillard and then appends Mme de V[intimi]lle without explaining the relation. The English preserves that separate attribution cue and Beaunier’s bracketed expansion; it does not invent a speaker connection.

T283.The source supplies [intimi] within the name. There is no added period between the closing quotation and the Mme de name cue; the relationship of the two attributions is not resolved.

S1.Source editor’s annotationMarch 28: “One can convince others by one’s own reasons, but one persuades them only by theirs.”

T80.The source annotation dated March 28 distinguishes convincing by one’s own reasons from persuading by the other person’s reasons. That date remains in the annotation; it does not replace the main entry’s April 1 date. The main paragraph’s Sometimes, however remains unfinished.

T284.The quoted March 28 date belongs to the source annotation, not an alternative main entry date.