Formerly, whenever I went a-fishing in my head for thoughts or fancies, I always caught something; now the fish no longer come like that. They are beginning to be petrified upon the bottom, and I am obliged to hew them out. Occasionally I can only extract them in fragments, like fossil remains, and patch something or other together from them.
I have frequently been reproached for committing faults which my censurers had neither the power nor the intelligence to commit.
One is never happier than when a strong inclination determines one to live exclusively in this world. My misfortune is that I exist, never in this world, but in a number of possible concatenations and combinations created, with the help of conscience, by my imagination. And thus I lose a part of my time without reason being able to get the upper hand.
When at times I come across a good idea of mine in one of my old notebooks, I am astonished how foreign it has become to me and my system, and am as delighted with it as if it were the thought of one of my predecessors.
I am extremely superstitious, but I am not in the least ashamed of it—any more than I am ashamed of believing that the earth does not move. It is the substance of my philosophy, and I only thank God that He has given me a soul able to correct the tendency.
Nothing puts me on better terms with myself than getting to understand some difficult point, and yet I so seldom set myself to master difficult things. I ought to try it more often.
I become daily more and more convinced that my nerve trouble is to a great extent nurtured, if not entirely caused, by
