Almost the whole of this Note Book is full of Sanskrit quotations, only so much portion is written in English.
1. Health.
“Allah does not count from life the days spent in chase.” – Arabs
“Exercise would cure a guilty conscience.” – Plato
“You will-never break down in a speech on the day you have walked twelve miles.” – Sydney Smith
“When the belly is full, it says to the head, sing, fellow” – Arabian Proverb
2. The experience of writing letters is one of the keys to the modus of inspiration
3. There is diurnal and secular rest. Rhythmic movement.
4. Will
Seneca on a fatal illness:—
“The thought of my father who could not have sustained such a blow as my death restrained me; I commanded myself to live.”
Goethe to Eckermann:
“I work more easily when the barometer is high than when it is low. Since I know this, I endeavour, when the barometer is low, to counteract the injurious effect by greater exertion and my attempt is successful.”
5. Time, Season, Morning.
6. Solitary converse with Nature.
7. Solitude of habit.
Transition – A ride near the sea, a sail near the shore.
We not only want time but warm time.
8. Conversation when it is best, is a series of intoxications, is the right metaphysical Professor.
Homer said, “When two come together, one apprehends before the other”, but it is because one thought well that the other thinks better; and two men of good mind will excite each other’s activity, each attempting still to cap the other’s thought.
9. Men-making poetry. Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me. “You shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels, nor Montague, nor the newest French Book, you may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus, Hindu mythology, and ethics. You may read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton and Milton’s prose as his verse; read Collins and Gray; read Hafiz and the Trouveurs.
10. Large estates, political relations, great hospitalities would have been impediments to them.
Itself is the dictator, the mind itself the awful oracle. All our power, all our happiness, consists in our reception of its hints, which ever become clearer and grander as they are obeyed.