ference between men.

8

There are many people who listen to a sermon in the same way as they
listen to vespers.

9

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he
errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that
side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him
the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees
that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now,
no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be
mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally
cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he
looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

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,[5] who only thinks of one thing.

The doctor,[6] 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,[7] becaus