Imbeciles are those who think that such things can be accomplished without the permission of the people,--and those who believe that glory can be founded only on virtue! XXXVI What is love? The need of coming out of one's self. Man is an animal of worship. To worship is to sacrifice one's self and to prostitute one's self. Thus all love is prostitution. The most prostituted being is the being beyond compare, is. God, since he is the soul supreme for every individual, since he is the common, inexhaustible reservoir of love. PRAYER Do not chastise me in my mother, you chastise my mother because of me.--I commend to you the souls of my father and Mariette.--Give me each day strength to perform the present duty and thus to become a hero and a saint. XXXVII A chapter on the indestructible, eternal, universal and ingenious human ferocity. Of the love of blood, of the intoxication of blood, of the intoxication of crowds. Of the intoxication of the executed criminal (Damiens). XXXIX I have always been astonished that women are allowed to enter church. What conversation can they have with God? The eternal Venus (caprice, hysteria, whim) is one of the seductive forms of the devil. XL Woman cannot separate the soul from the body. She is simple, like the animals.--A satirist would say it is because she has only a body. XLII Veuillot is so coarse and such an enemy of the arts that one would think all the democracy of the world was harbored in his breast. Development of the portrait. Supremacy of the pure idea in the Christian as in the Babouvian communist. Fanaticism of humility. Not even to aspire to understand religion. XLIV In love, as in almost all human affairs, the _entente cordial_ is the result of misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is pleasure. The man cries: "Oh my angel!" The woman coos: "Mamma! Mamma!" And the two imbeciles are persuaded that they are thinking in concert.--The insuperable gulf, which bars communication, remains unabridged. XLV Why is the spread of the sea so infinitely and so eternally agreeable? Because the sea conveys the thought both of immensity and of movement. Six or seven leagues are for man the radius of the infinite. 'Tis a diminutive infinite. What matter, if it suffice to suggest the whole? Twelve or fourteen leagues of liquid in movement are enough to convey the highest ideal of beauty which is offered to man in his transitory habitation. XLVI There is naught interesting on earth save its religions. There is a universal religion made for the alchemists of thought, a religion which is disengaged from man, considered as a heavenly reminder. XLVII Saint-Marc Girardin has spoken one word that will endure: "Let us be mediocre!" Set that beside this of Robespierre: "Those that do not believe in the immortality of their being, do themselves justice." The word of Saint-Marc Girardin implies a bitter hatred of the sublime. XLVIII