1) There are many people, especially Europeans and especially women, who not only talk but who write things that appear intelligent, in the same way as dumb people speak; as a matter of fact, it isn’t any more natural for them to think than for a dumb person to speak, but both one and the other, both the stupid and the dumb, have been taught. 2) To love an individual man, one has to be blinded. Without being blinded one can love only God, but people can be pitied, which means to love in a Godly way. 3) To get rid of an enemy, one must love him, as it is also said in the “Teaching of the twelve apostles.”[128] But to love one has to put to oneself the task for all one’s life of love towards an enemy, to do him good through love and to perfect oneself in love for him. 4) At first, one is surprised that stupid people should have within them such an assertive convincing intonation. But it is as it should be. Otherwise no one would listen to them. 5) I find this note: “A decoration for peasants, our happiness”--I can not remember what that means, but it is something that pleased me. I think it means that to a poor man looking on the life of the rich, it appears as happiness. But this happiness is as much happiness, as cardboard made into a tree or a castle--is a tree or a castle. 6) We are all attracted to the Whole and one to another, like particles of one body. Only our _roughness_, the lack of smoothness, our angles, interfere with our uniting. There is already an attraction, there is no need of making it, but one must plane oneself, wipe out one’s angles. 7) One of the strongest means of hypnotism, of exterior action on the spiritual state of man, is his dress. People know that very well; that is why there is a monastic garb in monasteries and a uniform in the army. 8) I was trying to recall two excellent subjects for novels, the suicide of old Persianninov and the substitution of a child in an orphan asylum. 9) When my weakness tortured me, I sought means of salvation, and I found one in the thought that there is nothing stationary, that everything flows, changes, that all this is for a _while_, and that it is only necessary to suffer the _while_ while we live--I and the others. And some one of us will go away first. (The _while_ does not mean to live in any way, but means, not to despair, to suffer it through to the end.) 10) I wanted to say that I was grateful, so as to make the other one well disposed, and later to tell the truth. No, I thought, that is not permitted. He will ascribe it to his virtues and the truth will be accepted even less. Man, not acknowledging his sins, is a vessel hermetically closed with a cover which lets nothing enter. To humble oneself, to repent, that means to take off the cover and to make oneself capable of perfection, of the good.