— like a man who had much strength and much ingenuity, but who had lost the use of an arm through some accident.

May 19.

When my friends are one-eyed; I look at them in profile.

May 21.

The rights of the people come not from the people but from justice; and justice comes from order, and order comes from God himself.

May 24.

— and when one is not orderly, one must at least be a child in vice and a man in virtue.

May 25.

For images, which are admittedly suited to making one love, are worth nothing for making one act. The mind delights in them, but stops there; unlike abstract ideas, in which it finds true pleasure only when it makes some application of them.

May 27.

... burdened with the unbearable weight of ourselves.

... lest, in our systems, we unthinkingly find better the order of things in which we would be best placed, as supporters or as founders.

That is because Platonism is reasonable only when it is beautiful, and it is beautiful only in minds that resemble Plato’s. It suits those alone. Platonism without Plato is unbearable.

May 28.

Men of wit whose minds are different. That they can neither understand one another nor agree.

That men are friends only with those who do not think, or think little, about their faults.

May 29.

Time softens excessive brilliance in words as in colors.

This memory, which arrests what is fleeting and fixes what is passing, makes one more severe than one should be when applied to men’s defects and especially to their faults.