10. People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have
themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.
11. All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all
those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the
theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate
that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all,
to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and
virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they
are likely to be touched by it. Its violence pleases our self-love, which
immediately forms a desire to produce the same effects which are seen so
well represented; and, at the same time, we make ourselves a conscience
founded on the propriety of the feelings which we see there, by which the
fear of pure souls is removed, since they imagine that it cannot hurt their
purity to love with a love which seems to them so reasonable.
So we depart from the theatre with our heart so filled with all the beauty
and tenderness of love, the soul and the mind so persuaded of its innocence,
that we are quite ready to receive its first impressions, or rather to seek
an opportunity of awakening them in the heart of another, in order that we
may receive the same pleasures and the same sacrifices which we have seen so
well represented in the theatre.
12. Scaramouch, who only thinks of one thing.
The doctor, who speaks for a quarter of an hour after he has said
everything, so full is he of the desire of talking.
13. One likes to see the error, the passion of Cleobuline, because she is
unconscious of it. She would be displeasing, if she were not deceived.
14. When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within
oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one
did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for
he has not shown us his
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