The intellectual or intelligible world is the one minds see and that, so to speak, God sees. The ideal world is the one poets imagine and compose by mingling what they know of the terrestrial world with what they conjecture of the intellectual world.

Ordinary clarities no longer suffice for me — when words’ meaning is not as clear as their sound — that is, when they do not offer my thought objects as transparent in themselves as the terms that name them.

Fénelon. He swims, he flies, he works in a fluid: but he himself is soft. He has feathers rather than wings. Inhabits a pure element, therein lies his merit.

... the ornaments and, so to speak, the clothes of poetry are there, but poetry is not. — And yet one can make verses that, by the force of their construction and form alone, are beautiful and poetic, just as one can make an exact and conclusive argument by the force of properly observed syllogistic form alone.

There is no art; but art is observed there.

Wherever there is reflection, there is a search, whether for words, thoughts, or turns of phrase; and then, since this search is natural, it is also legitimate.

There are two ways of being sublime. One is so through one’s ideas or through one’s feelings. In the second state, one has words of fire that penetrate and sweep one away. In the first, one has only words of light that give little warmth but ravish.

To speak to God of one’s wishes, of one’s affairs, is that permitted? — One can say that those who refrain out of respect and those who do so out of trust (and simplicity) do well.

August 5.

Fénelon is a moon. His brilliance is borrowed, and all his light is pale.

From the center one must perceive the circle.

Fénelon, in his precepts, speaks only of vehemence and has none. O! how much better he would have spoken had he spoken of elevation and delicacy! qualities of style in which his own excelled. I attribute elevation to him, not because he ever rises or holds himself very high; but he almost never touches the earth. He is subtle, he is light, but with a subtlety of nature, not of practice.

Gossip concerns what happens and not what is. It is a curiosity that rolls within a small circle and never leaves it; it is a search for facts in order to speak of them, not to draw any conclusion from them.

Substance and temper. Temper, it is art (or education); that gives it. — His talent, then, was a well-tempered tool, well exercised, but of middling substance. Like an instrument of bad iron, of angre [sic] or soft or brittle iron.

“Motives of commerce” is gentle. (See Fénelon, sermon for the day of the kings.) Motives of greed would be harsh. That would be truer (Molé would say). No; but here truth is spoken with greater kindness: there is more breadth in the expression without less precision. Truth takes on the character of the souls she enters: rigorous and rough in arid souls, tempered, softened, and as if polished in loving souls.