ut it has emerged in another form, because ambition is
nothing more nor less than a thirst for power, and my chief pleasure is
to make everything that surrounds me subject to my will. To arouse the
feeling of love, devotion and awe towards oneself--is not that the first
sign, and the greatest triumph, of power? To be the cause of suffering
and joy to another--without in the least possessing any definite right
to be so--is not that the sweetest food for our pride? And what is
happiness?--Satisfied pride. Were I to consider myself the best, the
most powerful man in the world, I should be happy; were all to love me,
I should find within me inexhaustible springs of love. Evil begets
evil; the first suffering gives us the conception of the satisfaction
of torturing another. The idea of evil cannot enter the mind without
arousing a desire to put it actually into practice. "Ideas are organic
entities," someone has said. The very fact of their birth endows them
with form, and that form is action. He in whose brain the most ideas
are born accomplishes the most. From that cause a genius, chained to an
official desk, must die or go mad, just as it often happens that a man
of powerful constitution, and at the same time of sedentary life and
simple habits, dies of an apoplectic stroke.

Passions are naught but ideas in their first development; they are an
attribute of the youth of the heart, and foolish is he who thinks that
he will be agitated by them all his life. Many quiet rivers begin their
course as noisy waterfalls, and there is not a single stream which will
leap or foam throughout its way to the sea. That quietness, however, is
frequently the sign of great, though latent, strength. The fulness and
depth of feelings and thoughts do not admit of frenzied outbursts. In
suffering and in enjoyment the soul renders itself a strict account of
all it experiences and convinces itself that such things must be. It
knows that, but for storms, the constant heat of the sun would dry it
up! It imbues itself with its own life--pets and punishes itself like a
favourite child. It is only in that highest state of self-knowledge that
a man can appreciate the divine justice.

On reading over this page, I observe that I have made a wide digression
from my subject... But what matter?... You see, it is for myself that I
am writing this diary, and, consequently anything that I jot down in it
will in time be a valuable reminiscence for me.